


in quiet desperation

by skywideopen



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Break Up, Depression, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2017-11-21 20:49:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 62,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skywideopen/pseuds/skywideopen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is the story of their time together; she waits, he comes back. The story goes that one time he comes back a little too late, and finds that waiting has turned her world upside-down. This is their story, those two lonely people who have had so much taken from them yet still fight to hold onto the little they have left. </p><p>[Post-S6/Pre-7x01 AU, Amy-centric. In which the Doctor comes back seven years late, not two.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> [2017 edit: I'm working on this again!]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time_   
>  _Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines_   
>  _Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way_   
>  _The time is gone, the song is over_   
>  _Thought I'd something more to say..._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello. This is Amy's story.
> 
> Everything that follows is (in theory) the result of one canon divergence: namely, that the Doctor returns to Amy just over seven years after dropping her off at the new house. Not two as per the 2012 Christmas Special.
> 
> The story itself will be structured around Elisabeth Kubler-Ross's famous five stages of grieving (but only loosely, mind).

* * *

**Prologue**

* * *

Amelia Pond is a woman of many hidden talents, and one of them is cooking.

It's no surprise to anyone who knows her, of course. After all, she'd spent year after year fending for herself, back in Leadworth, making her own meals whilst her Aunt went off and did whatever she did. Or she remembers doing that, anyway, despite the fact that she has parents now (as if they were something that one suddenly acquired) and she hadn't needed to make her own dinners as her kid in this world.

 _There's a minor contradiction,_ she thinks. _Using memories of things that never happened._

Well, she remembers it, so it's real, it happened, and contradictions be damned. She's long stopped trying to make sense of her ridiculously jumbled upbringing, a tangle of timelines and impossibilities that she knows better than to try and unknot.

Anyway, that's all so  _long_  ago now that she really shouldn't be bothering about all that. Leadworth is little more than a distant memory now – parents or not – and she rather likes it that way.

The point is that she's a damn good cook, she tells herself as she opens the oven door to remove her Christmas roast – golden-brown glazed and roasted ham – from its depths. Almost instantly, the room fills itself with the rich, succulent aroma of the ham, and she takes a long, deep breath as she places it on the stovetop, savouring her own handiwork.

It's a fairly large slab of meat, certainly far too large for her to eat by herself – but that's the point, of course. Even now, after all these years, she can't help but keep that tiny beacon of hope alive, that minute flicker that told her that he'll come back. Just as he'd promised once upon a time.

_I always come back._

So, like the last Christmas, and the Christmas before that, and the one before that, there are two seats at the table. One for her. One for her best friend.

Really, though, it's just a habit nowadays. A tradition, a rarity for her. She doesn't actually  _expect_  him to come back. He's supposed to be dead, after all, and dead people don't just drop in on old friends. Besides, he would've moved on. Like she'd always known he would, she'd flicker out of his life just like all the others flickered out of his life. He would have moved on from her, just like how she herself had moved on from everyone else.

 _Inertia._  It's a word they both hate.

She's about to cut into the steaming ham ( _god, that smells good_ ), get the water rolls and finish the potatoes when a sharp rapping on the door cuts through her little bubble.

_Oh, for-_

"Who's that?" she yells. "Carol singers?"

If it's another one of  _them_  – she has something on the kitchen cabinet just for this, fortunately.

"I have a water pistol!" she cries out, stomping irritably towards the door. If she's right, then whoever's on the other side of the door is about to have all hell – well, all water – break loose on them. "You wouldn't want to get wet on a night like  _this-"_

She wrenches the door open... and the words die instantly in her throat.

She sees unruly chocolate-brown hair. A broad, angular chin. Tweed jacket. That blasted bow-tie.

For a brief moment, time freezes and Amelia Pond has no idea what to think. Should she be happy that he's  _finally_  come back? Should she be indifferent? Angry?

What the hell is she supposed to feel?

"I wasn't sure," the Doctor began, the tone of his voice emphasising just how unsure, "how long..."

Well, that answers  _that_  question. Her voice is as sharp as knives, as cold as ice.

" _Seven years?"_

She squirts him several times. He makes a feeble attempt to bat the water away. She doesn't smile – she's too angry with him to smile.

"Okay," he concedes. "Fair point."

She lowers the water pistol and looks him up and down. "So," she says in a slightly less cold, but still brittle tone. "You're not dead."

"And a happy new year!" he cries out in reply, opening his arms with that old goofy smile in an attempt to get one in return. Well, sorry, she's still furious with him.

"River told me."

That wipes the smile clean off his face. Good.

He sighs. "Of course she did."

She purses her lips, taps her foot on the ground once, twice.  _Still pissed off._  "Well?" She asks, still rigidly keeping any warmth from her voice. "I'm not hugging first."

He turns up his nose, looking somewhere near the corner of the door. "Me neither," he mutters.

 _Still a five-year-old kid, then,_ she thinks.  _And yes, I'm still pissed off._  She glances away from him, suddenly finding the water pistol deeply fascinating. Anywhere but him, because she is  _still pissed off_ -

It doesn't work. She catches his eye, briefly, and he looks so  _ridiculous_  in his bow-tie, with that equally ridiculous grin, that she bursts into giggles, falling into his arms.

She's still angry with him, but as she feels him pull her body into him, clinging to her as if he never wants to let her go, she knows that she'll have time to be angry with him later.

It's Christmas, after all.

* * *

He's always liked her cooking.

Of course, the Doctor has always liked lots of things about Amy, but her cooking is right up there. He rarely has time for what humans call 'normal' food, but Amy seems to have this knack for getting things just right for his tastes. Or maybe he's just biased.

Either way, he's delighted to see her again, and equally delighted to be munching on her water rolls. She smiles, watching him wolf down his food with twinkling eyes.

"You're still disgusting, you know that?" she tells him with a giggle in her voice. He glares at her in mock outrage.

"You're one to talk." Well, not really – between her vibrant, tumbling ginger hair, full crimson lips and dazzling emerald eyes, she looks positively radiant. He can't remember the last time he saw her so happy.

She laughs at his little jibe, the sound washing over his ears like liquid honey on a warm summer's day. It's perfect, and for one moment, everything is right in his world. Which it should be, of course, because everything's right at Christmas.

"So what have you been up to?" she asks, taking a sip of her wine. "Oh, and how's Melody?"

"How d'you think?"

"I'm guessing amazing, as always. She's my daughter, after all."

He smiles fondly at her, because of course she's right. "That she is, and I'm really the same as ever. Yourself?"

"I write stuff," she replies between mouthfuls. "Mostly travel articles and as a part-time foreign correspondent. I dabble."

He raises an eyebrow. "Interesting mix."

"I know, right? I couldn't settle for ages, so I decided to send something about Hawaii to the Times. The real one, by the way," she adds for the benefit of his querying glance, "not the Space one or that bloody Medieval one you dragged us to. They must have liked it, 'cos they hired me the next day."

"And the foreign whatever-it-was?"

She gives him a nonchalant wave of her fingers. "I was doing a piece on Africa. I had to write  _something_."

"Not sure I understand."

She shifts her gaze to him, and he's surprised to see just how deep the wells of her eyes are, just how much wisdom has been inculcated there. "Remember what you told me about children crying?"

It clicks immediately. His expression brightens, his smile bordering on dazzling. He's rarely been this proud of her. "Look at you, Amelia Pond. All... grown up."

She doesn't say anything in reply. She doesn't need to. They just gaze at each other, relishing the moment. They lose themselves in the other's eyes, seeing little but the adoration they have for each other reflected back at them.

It's as perfect a reunion as the Doctor could have possibly imagined. Except, of course, for one little thing.

"By the way, Amy-"

"Amelia." She's still smiling that warm, tender smile, and that light is still twinkling in her eyes, but the way she cut him off so firmly puts him immediately on guard.

"Oh?"

"Amelia now. I changed my name back."

Guardedness gives way to curiosity. "Really? Why?"

"Felt better. More me." She shrugs – but that just stokes the embers of suspicion which are threatening to build into a roaring flame. He knows his Amelia Pond and he knows that shrug. It's the shrug that tells him that nothing is wrong, which he knows means that everything is wrong.

But he doesn't have time to indulge his curiosity right now, because there's something rather more obvious about this whole scene that is amiss.

"Always preferred Amelia anyway. But where's Rory?"

He's probably being overprotective and a worry-wart – a common complaint of hers – but he has to ask. He's become so used to seeing Rory by her side that it simply doesn't seem right, the fact that she's alone like this. Like a puzzle missing its most vital piece, she  _needs_  him. Fine, there's probably a good reason – but then why is the table set only for two?

Then again, he's most likely being silly. Rory's probably busy with something – he was a nurse, after all. Nurses were busy people, and didn't necessarily get a break on Christmas day. He's sure there's some innocent, simple reason for Rory's absence. In fact, that was probably why Amy – no,  _Amelia_  – had set the table for two, having had no reason to expect his own return. He's probably stolen Rory's food, actually. He expects her to brush his query off with ease, calling him an idiot.

What he  _doesn't_  expect is for her smile to freeze in place, for her shoulders to involuntarily tighten and her pupils to dilate.

"Oh – yeah. Him."

He almost drops his fork, catching himself just in time. He's stunned less by what she said than by  _how_  she said it, like she was brushing off a proverbial fly.

"Sorry, what?" He manages to keep his voice light, but he can't avoid the horrible knot forming in his stomach.

"We, um, you know. Split up. Rory and I," she tells him, the words falling from her mouth in a rush, as if saying it quickly will make it mean less. "Oh, don't look at me like  _that_ ," she groans, catching his expression. "It happened ages ago. God. You look like a sick cat."

He ignores the last jibe, recognising it for what it is – an attempt to distract him. He's done it himself often enough to recognise it. "You're joking. Please tell me you're joking."

She sighs dramatically and rolls her eyes, holding up her hands. "Look. See anything different?"

He can – she's not wearing a ring. And based on the fact that there's no visible mark on the skin of her right ring finger, she hasn't been wearing one for a long time. How had he not noticed that? It should have been one of the first things he saw when she'd opened the door, holding that water pistol right to his face.

_Because, old man, you saw what you wanted to see. Not what was actually there._

That doesn't mean he believes it, though.

"You – you split up? Actually, properly, split up with Rory?"

She groans. "Oh, come on. Are we going to do the whole relationship counselling thing  _now_? It's Christmas."

"Amelia,  _please_."

She sighs, gives him that shrug again. "It was ages ago, as I said. Wasn't fun, but what can you do?"

"What  _can_  I do?" Oh, he's getting desperate now – he's actually pleading.

Technically, she's still smiling, but the warmth is gone from it. Her lips curve upwards in a mirthless, melancholic expression, the shadow of smiles long wasted and a happiness long curbed.

"Nothing. There's nothing you can do. It's not one of those things you can just fix like you fix your bow-tie," she murmurs, running one of her long, slender fingers along the tip of the garment.

He grabs her hand, rubbing it frantically, desperately. "Amelia, if there's anything I can help you with-"

"Raggedy man," she cuts him off, "the time for that was long ago."

The words cut through him like a knife. He flinches, letting go of her hand. Her expression has hardened, covered in layer upon layer of impenetrable defence that he's sure wasn't there when he'd last left her.

_What have I done to you, Amelia Pond?_

He swallows, his throat dry.

"How long?"

Her voice is cool and her eyes are clear as she speaks. No sign of tears, no flicker of remorse. "About four and a half years."


	2. Denial: I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But this was supposed to be her normal life. Stable. Static. Just her and Rory, 'til the end of their days. The idea that her vision of a quiet, tranquil light might just be that little bit more fragile than she first imagined worries her a little. It doesn't keep her up at night or make her take long walks on floodlit streets, but it does worry her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This entire first part of the story will deal with Amy's infertility in a very direct way.

* * *

**ACT ONE: Denial**

* * *

 

**Christmas Day, 2013**

It's Christmas.

As such, it's Amy Pond's favourite time of year. The lights are up, the house is decorated and the flames are dancing merrily in the fireplace. It's all glimmering golds and festive greens, all comforting warmth and joyful laughter. It hits her that right now, in this place, this time, at home with her husband on Christmas Day, she's finally found perfection.

Rory's busy cooking Christmas dinner, while she cleans up the drinks their friends and family had left behind. They're great and all, but they both know that this moment should be reserved exclusively for themselves. Once they clean up the mess.

"You know what I always say about now?" she asks to nowhere in particular, bending down to clean a sheen of spilled champagne from the floor.

"What, that there should be two of you?" Rory replies from somewhere behind her. "We tried that, didn't we?"

Amy snorts. "You mean that time you started hitting on a sixty-year old me?"

Once upon a time her wit would've left him as red as her hair, stuttering a panicked reply, but they've far outgrown that and he can easily match her now. So he just laughs instead.

"What can I say? Wrinkles make you hot."

He's won there, and she knows it. "Shut your face," she shoots back, but there's a smile riding on her words.

Yes, this is just about perfect.

Well, alright, it's not  _quite_  perfect. For one thing, Rory's cooking dinner, not her, and even worse he won't tell her what he's cooking. She doesn't mind the first so much, despite the fact that they both know that she's the better cook. But he's insisting, which she finds oh-so-sweet, so she doesn't press him. Not telling her what she's making, though – well, that's just infuriating.

"Ah-ah!" He sticks up his hand to block her, holding it right in front of her eyes as she tries to sneak into the kitchen for the umpteenth time. She tries to shake it away, but he's standing in front of her now, blocking her view.

"Come on," she sighs, pouting irritably. "Why won't you let me see?"

"You'll see soon enough," he promises. "Come on, be patient."

She groans, rolls her eyes, and decides to do the thing that comes most naturally to her. By which she means that she kisses him.

It's slow and tender, lips parted ever-so-slightly, her hand wrapping around the back of his neck as it deepens – and then it's over. She pulls back, her eyes misty, and she can see from his expression that he finds her the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.

He opens his mouth, his breath hot on her cheek, and says, "Wait."

She makes a frustrated growl, like the yowling of a cat denied its supper, and stomps away. "I hate you."

A rolling laugh from the kitchen. "Sure, Amy."

"So much."

"I love you too. Now  _wait._ "

It's worth it, though, because he makes the best Christmas roast she's ever had. The ham melts in her mouth, and the glaze... well, it's to die for.

He pauses briefly from eating to gaze fondly at her. She's devouring her portion at an almost unseemly rate, far faster than she's ever eaten his cooking before. Normally, she's a tad too self-conscious to eat like this, but appearances be damned, this is  _delicious._

"Like it?" Rory asks wryly.

"Not bad," she admits, which they both know translates to  _bloody amazing._

"Sophia gave me the recipe," he tells her between mouthfuls. "Good, isn't it?"

She rolls her eyes. "I swear, you listen to Sophia more than you do me. It's not like she's some sort of celebrity chef or something."

"What? Bet you ten quid that yours isn't as good."

She can't resist. "Deal. It'll have to wait 'til next Christmas, though."

"Oh? Why next Christmas?"

She smirks at him. "'Cos it's Christmas, numpty. Everything tastes better at Christmas."

They both laugh at that, the sounds mingling in the space between them. As the conversation flows on between them, they both know that she's right – everything's better at Christmas.

It's not  _quite_  perfect, however. There's something missing.

Through dinner, Amy can see it out of the corner of her eye, and it bugs her relentlessly. She knows that she's being silly, that there's no reason that he should come back for her – dead people don't drop in on old friends – but, well, she can't  _not wait_  for him, can she?

Even so, the third plate at the table remains untouched, the third seat unfilled.

Amy does her best to ignore it, and as a general rule her best is good enough, but it's still  _there,_ isn't it? She struggles to put a word to it; the best one she finds is 'incompleteness'. It's awkward and clunky, and as such it's pretty apt for how she feels right now. Incomplete. It's in the silences that Rory can't quite fill, the gaps in conversation they leave for someone who isn't there.

Rory, bless him, is understanding, and doesn't bring it up until they're doing the washing up.

"What d'you want to do about that plate?" He asks in the middle of stacking the dishwasher.

"Oh – um, leave it, I guess. Just in case." The words spill out of her mouth before she's fully aware of what she's saying. Rory takes her hands in his own, rubbing them with his thumbs.

"Amy." The tone of his voice makes it clear what he's about to say.

She has to look away. "Shut up. I know he'll be back."

"So do I. But that doesn't meant he'll come back today."

Her eyes snap back to his and her heart stills at the warmth of his smile, the depth of the concern in his eyes.

"But until then..."

He kisses one of her hands. "We have everything we'll ever need."

And she smiles, laughs, and forgets about that hole in her heart, because he's right. Of course he's right. Rory's nearly always right.

* * *

It's not all he's right about, of course.

In the days after the Doctor dropped them off with a brand new house, a brand new car and a brand new life, Amy had rather gone into her shell. Barely eating, barely sleeping, spending hour after hour staring out of her bedroom window. Daydreaming of the days she'd once had, those days she could never have because she'd never see her best friend again.

It's one of her deepest flaws, really. She'd spent so long with her head amongst the stars that she'd forgotten that her feet are on the ground. But then again, that's what Rory was there for... is there for.

"You can't keep being like this, Amy," Rory had told her after about a week. "He wanted you to live, not waste away."

It's amazing how he can tell her the most simple things which are exactly what she needs to hear.

It had brought her eyes down from the sky and forced her to emerge from her self-imposed exile, coming out of that deep, dark place where no one could find her. She'd smiled, laughed at him and started living again.

It had been difficult, though. She'd never lived in London before – hell, apart from the occasional visit to the museum, she'd rarely  _been_  in London. It's not remotely like Leadworth, where everything happens at its own decidedly slow pace. There, she could set a routine and forget, safe in the knowledge that nothing would ever happen to disturb her equilibrium, dull though that equilibrium was.

Not here, though. Here, it's as if time has the accelerator permanently pressed to the floor. Events and obligations flash past in the blink of an eye, her world changes before she can so much as sit down and take a look. She's used to change, of course. The past few years of her life has had little  _but_  change.

But this was supposed to be her  _normal_  life. Stable. Static. Just her and Rory, 'til the end of their days. The idea that her vision of a quiet, tranquil life might just be that little bit more fragile than she first imagined worries her a little. It doesn't keep her up at night or make her take long walks on floodlit streets, but it still worries her.

Her world has been so unpredictable for so long, is just a  _little_  predictability too much to ask for?

Her inability to settle had been immediately obvious for all to see. She'd drifted between jobs, flitting from one modelling contract to the other. It's not that she's bad at it, goodness no. She's still hot and charismatic – well, really, she's drop-dead gorgeous, and she knows it. The agencies had all fallen head over heels for her but her heart was never in it, and she was  _always_  the one to terminate the contract.

"You really need to settle, Amy," Rory had told her seriously, after she'd come home with the news that she'd walked out on yet  _another_  job. "It's not good for you."

"I'm trying, Rory," she'd retorted, slightly defensively. "I'm really trying, alright?"

And she was trying. She is trying. She really is. After two years, more than a few screaming, tearful arguments and sleepless nights later, she's finally settled into a routine of some kind: she lasts about three months on each job now before walking out. It's not really a routine at all, but it's at least workable, and it imposes just enough order on the chaos for them to get by.

She's still quietly amazed that she's capable of doing this, really, and it hadn't sunk in just how far she'd come until a few months previously. It had been a cool evening, chilly by October standards, but still pleasant enough for Amy to wait outside and enjoy the meteors as they streaked overhead. Oh, and the news they'd brought...

 _He's alive._  Alive. That most wonderful, extraordinary of words, that thing that  _he_  had taught her to cherish above all else. It had thrown open all those closed doors, reopened all the gates into those secluded areas of her mind once more, made her slip back into her old waiting patterns, enticed her into the possibility of  _that._ Of all of time and space at her feet.

But that's not what she's waiting for any more, is she?

Because what her boys – both of them – have taught her, in their own special ways, is that life isn't all about saving star whales, or seeing van Gogh, or fighting pirates. It's about those boys, those two men who had given her so, so much. No, she's not waiting for time and space, for a madcap time-traveller who can sweep her off her feet and take her to the stars. She's not waiting for him to come and fix their lives, or show them the stars, or anything like that. She's waiting –  _they're_  waiting – for their best friend because they still love him, and that's that.

She's waiting for her best friend, and she doesn't need to put real life on the backburner while she does.

After all she's seen, after all she's done and after everything that's happened to her, it's still the simplest of things which show her what really matters.

* * *

Like, for example, how to get rid of a raging hangover.

"Ugh," she groans as Rory gently shakes her awake. Her head feels like it's been filled with lead and concrete and fire, and it's just  _awful_. Just how many shots of whisky did she have last night?

 _Too many._  She curls into a ball and digs into the sofa, trying to shield her eyes from the dazzling light streaming in through the curtains. She doesn't even know how she  _got_  to the sofa. And where the hell are her clothes?

"Come on, Amy, it's already afternoon. Time to rise and shine." How on earth is he so  _lucid_? She groans again, refusing to budge.

"Comfy. Sleep now."

"Do I need to tickle you?"

She shoots him her most venomous, hangover-fuelled glare. "Don't you bloody dare."

Too late. Within seconds she's on the floor, writhing with breathless giggles between bouts of classic Scottish-laced profanity. She screams blue bloody murder at him, trying to smack him with limbs she can barely control, glaring at him through eyes which are clouded with tears of laughter.

She hates him so much right now, and when he finally stops tickling her she shows just how much she hates him – by smearing her lips messily across his. Her breath probably tastes of alcohol and she has barely any control over what her lips are doing, but he must have gotten the point because she can feel his hand tangling in her wild ginger hair, tugging her into him. When she breaks off, his breath is hot on her cheek and there's a fire smouldering in her eyes, filling her mind with a thousand wildly inappropriate thoughts.

Which is when, of course, she slaps him.

" _Ow!"_

"Don't ever tickle me again," she grumbles, though they both know that she secretly loves it. She picks herself off the sofa gingerly, using his arm as support. Her light-pink dressing gown is there on the armrest, so she wraps it around herself, trying her best to make herself presentable by flattening her hair. Looking at her right now, no one would have guessed that she's an in-demand model. "When is it?"

"One in the afternoon."

"No – I mean, what day?" God, she really is out of it.

"Boxing Day." He passes her a glass of water and an headache tablet, followed by a cup of coffee which she accepts gratefully – what sort of shape would she be in without him? She looks him up and down, noticing that he's already in his hospital greens.

"You have to go to work?"

"Yeah. My shift starts in an hour, I have to run. Boxing Day is always busy at the hospital, too many people drinking too much, too many family fights." He hesitates after that, taking in her appearance more fully. "Although-"

"No, no," she cuts him off quickly when she realises where he's going, straightening herself as she does so. "I'm fine."

He looks her up and down, an eyebrow raised. "Sure?"

" _Fine,_  Rory." She won't have him miss work on her account unless she really, really needs him to. It's just a mild hangover, nothing worth getting worked up over. "Go on, you've got plenty of people to help without worrying yourself sick about me."

He still looks ambivalent but she's always been the persuasive type, and she knows his soft spots. He kisses her on the cheek and puts on his coat. "If you say so. Lunch is on the table. I'll be back by eight."

"Thanks. Hang on, wait-" He pauses at the door, giving her a querying glance. She hesitates before she continues. "Did we-?"

The inflection of the question and the way she stumbles over her words like a nervous teenager makes it abuntantly clear what she's asking, but he understands. It's not about embarrassment. It's about something far more personal than that.

"Yeah. We did. After you'd had about half a bottle of whisky."

She glares at him, blushing again. Well, it  _was_  Christmas.

"Oh, shut your face." But she waves him goodbye as he exits the house.

When he leaves though, there's a little ball of trepidation sitting in her stomach as she collapses back onto the couch. It'll be weeks until she knows – unless the last few times were successful – but maybe last night was the night. They've tried so many times, so often now, without success.

Because Rory wasn't  _quite_  right yesterday – they don't have  _everything_ they'll ever need. They're missing two small things. One of them is her best friend.

The other melted in her arms.

* * *

Her parents drop by that afternoon. Unannounced, naturally – they're parents, after all. She's both surprised and delighted, having missed them yesterday.

"Merry Christmas," her mother, Tabetha, says, kissing her on both cheeks as she opens the door. She's still fairly hungover, but she's also Scottish, so she hides it with relative ease. In fact, it's not really a hangover that she has now – it's more a general nausea. She's felt like this on and off for much of the past two years, it's not really a big deal.

"I didn't expect you down here." She gives her father a big, warm hug and ushers them inside.

"We tried to come down for Christmas, but unfortunately it was snowing too much," he replies, turning on the spot. He looks even more jolly than usual – as well as more round – and his eyes light up when he sees the ribbons of tinsel draped around the rooms.

"Augustus just couldn't find the snow-chains, that's all," Tabetha says. She looks Amy up and down. "You look lovely."

 _Lovely_  is hardly the description Amy would use for how she's feeling right now –  _someone get this blowtorch off my brain_  would be more accurate – but she smiles gratefully nonetheless.

"Thanks. Not so bad yourself." She directs them to the kitchen table, uncorking a fresh bottle of wine for the three of them. It's probably not the most intelligent idea to be drinking again when she's in this state, but she's Scottish, damn it. "How's Leadworth?"

"Charming as ever," Tabetha replies, taking a wine glass from her daughter. "Why don't you ever come and visit us?" Amy's parents came down fairly often, but the inverse almost never happened. The last time Amy had gone to Leadworth had been... well, it had been a while ago.

She shrugs. "I don't really have time, sorry." Which is true, after a fashion – modelling is time-consuming, exhausting work, and between that and taking care of the house and all, she simply can't find the time. She suspects, however, that if she put her mind to it she'd be able to clear a day or two every now and then, yet she never does.

She puts it down to Leadworth. She never fit there, she was always far too big a person for such a small little town. She needed too much, it gave her too little.

Her mother sighs in reply. "That's a shame. The swimming pool finally opened last November, the whole village was so excited."

She has to laugh at that; Leadworth certainly has its quirks. "Yeah, I can imagine." The laugh turns into a bit of a splutter and a cough at the end, though, as an unexpected bout of queasiness hits her.

"Amelia? Are you alright?" Her mother reaches across to her with concern written across her brow.

"No, I'm fine." She smiles it off, as she always does. It's not the first time she's felt randomly ill, and she always waves it off. Really, she's more annoyed at herself for letting it affect her.

"Are you sure? Do you need some water-?"

" _Fine_ , mum." She rolls her eyes. Mothers. They never change, do they? Worse still, Tabetha is indeed getting her some water. "Geez, you're even worse than Rory."

"Where is Rory, by the way?" Augustus asks, peeking into the lounge room as if he'd been hiding there the whole time. "I was hoping he would be here."

"At work," Amy replies, accepting the glass of water despite her earlier protestations. "Hospitals don't shut down just 'cos it's Christmas time."

"That's a shame. He's a lovely man," her father tells her in a far-too-sombre-to-be-natural way. She splutters on the water entering her mouth from an involuntary laugh, but she manages to not choke in front of her own parents.

"He is," she manages after a few coughs. "He really is."

"You're lucky to have him," her mother tells her, her voice laced with satisfaction.

"I know. He makes everything just... better," she replies lovingly. Even though it's mid-winter and rather cold inside, a tingling heat trickles across her skin. It's all warm and fuzzy and for a brief, silent second, she's at peace.

"Why don't you two start a family?"

The warmth disappears an instant, leaving her clammy and... sick. Very, very sick.

"Pardon?" Her voice is light, but there's something awful rising up her throat and she thinks she knows what it is.

"The two of you should start a family," Tabetha repeats, though her expression indicates that she's noticed the change in Amy's demeanour. "You'd be wonderful parents."

Amy opens her mouth. Closes it again. She's completely at a loss for words – what can she say? What can she  _possibly_  say? That, well, she's  _already_  a mother and, given that she'd only spent a month raising her daughter as a normal parent, she's probably quite a terrible one by definition? That her daughter was actually once her best mate from school, her partner-in-crime who she always got into trouble with? That her daughter is  _older_  than her, only dropped in once a year, and... and...

"Are you alright, Amelia?" Tabetha asks, clearly concerned now. "You look rather pale."

"What? Yeah – fine," she covers up quickly, flashing a smile. She has no idea – beyond the hangover – why she suddenly feels so awful, but she's already starting to think of her best line to excuse herself and... well, she really needs a lie down.

"Look, I mean – we'd love to, and we've been trying, alright?" Oh, she's certainly been trying. She'd probably make her parents blush the colour of beetroot if she described just how hard she and Rory had been trying. That hole in her heart isn't Doctor-sized, after all. No, it's slightly bigger than that. It's the size of a childhood dream.

Her mother doesn't look convinced by either her protestation that she's fine, or by her explanation of why she doesn't have a child. "Really? I mean, you've been married about three years..."

She frowns, her eyes flashing, and she's about to hit back, but then a wave of nausea hits her that's so intense that it makes her head spin. Suddenly, the world tilts on its side and, well, she's not saying anything much after that.

* * *

"I'm fine."

"You should go see the doctor."

"He's not around," Amy jokes weakly as Rory dabs sweat from her brow.

"Not what I meant, silly," he chides her, though he smiles at the joke. "You need to see a doctor, though. You're running a bit of a temperature."

"I'm telling you, I'm  _fine_ , alright?" she repeats, a little stronger this time. In reality, she doesn't feel fine at all – her arms feel like they're clothed in lead and her skin has these weird hot and cold patches scattered across it, as if it doesn't know whether to feel feverish or clammy.

She doesn't recall much of the last few hours. There's a few images and feelings, of cold hardwood against her cheek as she hits the ground, of her mother's frantic voice on the phone as her father tries to tend to her, of two pairs of arms laying her in her own soft, comfortable bed, and then of Rory's familiar healing touch as he comes home early.

"Amy, you really should-"

"Aren't you a nurse? Couldn't you take care of me yourself?"

"I'm not about to go prescribing treatments to my own wife when I don't even know what you have," Rory tells her sternly. Oh, he's got his serious-overprotective face on. She has a love-hate relationship with that face – hate because it means he's about to be all annoying and mollycoddling, love because it reminds her just how much he cares about her.

"Go see a proper doctor. Your parents are still around, by the way. They've promised to stay overnight, by the way, so you'll be alright."

She grumbles her assent at last. "And you're taking me?"

He hesitates. "I should probably go back to work, it's busy, but-"

It clicks. "Oh, right. That's fine, you don't need to stick around."

She can see the guilt in his eyes, an unwillingness to leave her at a slightly delicate juncture. "No, I think-"

" _Ro-ray_. I'll be fine, alright? They're my parents, stupid-head." Even when she feels like the pits she can't help but roll her eyes and smirk at him. Sometimes she wonders how they work at all – he mollycoddles her, she hates being mollycoddled.

He nods – but there's a condition, as there almost always is. "I'll go  _after_  you let your parents take you to see a doctor."

She sighs. It's like she's a little girl again, being dragged to the doctor by fretting parents. "Rory-"

" _Go_ , Amy."

She crosses her arms angrily and pouts at him, but she listens to him. After all, he's almost always right.

* * *

It's not that bad, though. For the most part, Tabetha and Augustus treat her like a grown woman and stay out of her way, letting her and her doctor converse in private.

"So you felt sick and collapsed?" The kind-faced man, whose name is Dr. Patel, asks as he takes her temperature.

She nods.

"Eaten much?"

"A little. Just a light lunch." She hadn't really felt in any fit shape to eat any more, frankly. He clicks on his torch and inspects her mouth, forcing it open with his fingers, before moving to her eyes. She flinches at the brightness of the light, despite the torch being pitifully weak.

"Hmm. Have you been drinking?"

She hesitates. "A little." A raised eyebrow. "Alright, a lot. It was Christmas."

He chuckles. "I'm not blaming you, and it's not really what's wrong."

It's her turn to raise her own eyebrows. "Oh? So what is?"

"You have a bit of a physiological imbalance. Either hormonal or nutrient – hopefully the latter."

"How do you tell the difference?"

"Well, ideally by a blood test, which-"

"-involves sticking a big fat needle into the inside of my elbow, doesn't it?" She's had blood tests before and found it a singularly unpleasant experience.

"Well – yes."

She shakes her head at near-comical speed. God, she is such a sissy when it comes to needles, isn't she?

"Yeah, I'll pass. Any other way to tell?"

"Well, most hormonal balances come down to one of two things, both of which should be reasonably easy to identify. Firstly, are you pregnant?"

She shakes her head. God, how she'd love to be.

"Okay. Second – and I realise this may be delicate, but do you have any fertility issues?"

Her breath stills in her throat and her heart is pounding in her chest. She hadn't even considered that. She'd  _never_  considered that. It was impossible, she'd reasoned, completely-

"No. Not that I'm aware of."

Her reaction isn't lost on him, and she can see his brow furrowing, but he doesn't press the subject further.

"Well, I'd still prefer a blood test to be sure – but it does look like a nutrient deficiency," he adds quickly, catching a glimpse of the horrified-yet-defiant expression on Amy's face. "Just make sure you have a proper, balanced diet and exercise a bit, and you'll be fine."

She nods. Yes, she'll be fine. Of course she'll be.

She's always fine.


	3. Denial: II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s the little things at first – it’s always the little things. Her temper is shorter, her patience thinner and her irritability growing at a rate of knots. Her eyes flash when a door isn’t properly closed, she snaps at at a joke she once would have laughed off. Little things soon become big ones, and by late August she’s stopped greeting him at the door when he comes home, the meals awaiting him are cold leftovers and her back is turned to him when they sleep. The fire hasn’t died, but it’s spluttering and she can’t work up the energy to keep it burning.

_I'm always fine._

Amy keeps telling herself that, but it doesn't work. Someone's set up a merry-go-round in her head, and the thought spins her round and round, leaving her just as disoriented as before. It's not even her mystery illness any more, it's something far deeper than that.

She's on autopilot for the rest of the evening. She's barely aware of what she's agreeing to when Dr. Patel tells her to go on a multivitamin supplement. Neither is she sure why her mouth is saying the words  _yes, I'm fine_  as her parents drive her home.

"Are you sure?" Tabetha seems less than convinced, and the urgency of her query shows it. Augustus casts a worried glance back at Amy from the driver's seat – if anything, she's even paler and her forehead has drooped onto the window.

"Look mum, I'm really alright. Just need to go home and rest." The flatness of her reply, however, tells a different story.

"You look dreadful, dear. Are you sure it's just a nutrient deficiency?"

_No._

"Yes."

Her parents back down – they know her far too well to push her further. However, a lie with conviction is still a lie, and as the streetlights flash through her vision, one after the other, she's still not entirely sure what's making those words come out of her mouth.

She's on her bed when Rory gets not long later. He finds her staring somewhere vaguely into the distance, her eyes unfocussed and her manner detached.

"You alright?" he asks when he spots her, a book open in her lap but the words passing straight over her head.

"Fine." Her reply is instinctive, and she gives him a flashing, dazzling smile. Where does  _that_  come from?

He looks even less convinced than her mother was. "Are you sure?"

"It's nothing. Nutrient deficiency," she tells him. Frankly, she's not even sure what the words even mean, she's not sure what any words mean now, but if it stops him worrying then it'll do.

Mercifully, it works. He exhales, the tension running from him like a deflating balloon. He musses up her hair – which, as he intends, just makes her more irritated.

"That's what I thought," he tells her quietly. She stops trying to smack his hand away and stares at him, not entirely sure if she's heard him correctly.

"You – you did?" Her voice is breathless, timid. The words coming from some doctor's mouth is one thing, but coming from  _Rory-_

"I'm a  _nurse_ , Amy." Infuriatingly, there's a shadow of a smirk on his face. "I'm good with these things."

She stares at him for a moment, unsure how to react, until instinct takes over and she launches herself at him, attacking every part of him that she can reach.

"Hey –  _what_  – ow!" His spluttering is only broken by his attempts to dodge the blows raining furiously down on every inch of his body. "Amy –  _ow_  – stop!"

" _That_  is for making me worried by not telling me that before," she seethes, though inside she feels like a half-ton weight has been lifted off her chest. At last, she can breathe freely again. "Moron."

"So sorry, Amy," he apologises, though she can see a shadow of a smile beneath his cowering arms. At last, she stops assailing him and he tentatively peaks out from behind his arms. "Feeling better now?

"Much, yeah," Amy replies breathlessly. Her hair has developed a mind of its own, sticking up on one side and her cheeks are flushed from the effort. As her breathing settles, the wildness in her eyes dissipates and she finally notices Rory's cowering, awkward stance in front of her.

She bursts into giggles and falls into his arms, settling her head in the crook of his neck. The nausea hasn't gone away, but so long he's there for her, she'll be fine.

Because she's Amy Pond, and her Rory is always there for her. And she's always fine.

* * *

Her nausea clears up overnight and she's back to her usual self, vivacious and full of life. Good thing, too, because she hadn't quite comprehended at the time what 'a balanced diet' actually entailed. She's Scottish and hence used to having fried something-or-other in every second meal, so it's a bit of a shock to her system.

"Oh, come off it," she groans about a week into the new year, as Rory sets down a plate consisting mostly of mushrooms. She tries to be nice and not use the term  _rabbit food_ , but-

"Now now, Amy," he chides her gently when she fails, though there's a smile woven in his words. "Doctor's orders."

"I am  _not_  eating that," she declares, and folds her arms petulantly across her chest. It's a nine-year-old's response, but then this is a nine-year-old's dinner. She's a model, for goodness' sake, she doesn't need a diet.

She fully intends to sit there through dinner just to prove the point (despite her stomach's loud objections) but Rory, damn him, knows her pressure points. Rather than try to convince her directly, he goes for the more devious route.

"Suit yourself," he shrugs, and picks up her plate, threatening to tip its contents onto his own.

Her resolve snaps. She snatches the plate back with a huff and gives him a truly lethal glare.

"Hate you," she grumbles, though she reaches for her fork as well.

"Yeah, yeah. Go on, eat up."

She really does hate him at the moment, but to surprise it actually tastes... good. Really good. In fact, before long, she's positively wolfing it down, and having to tell him repeatedly to  _shut up_  as he teases her about it.

And she can't complain that it isn't working. Three weeks after Christmas, her mystery illness has all but vanished and she feels as good as she's ever felt in years. Another reminder, then, that Rory's almost always right. Though when she mentions that late one evening – blurts, really – this to him, he looks surprised.

"Really?"

"Yeah – I mean, ever since you put me on a rabbit food diet-"

"It's not  _rabbit food,_ Amy," he sighs.

"Shut up, it totally is." She no longer complains about it, but the exasperated reaction she gets when she uses her pet term makes her smile every time, so she keeps at it. "Anyway, it's worked."

He shoots her a surprised glance, though she knows that it stems less from the fact it's worked and more from the fact she's admitting it.

"So you're feeling better now?"

"Much, yeah." She gives him a light kiss on the cheek to emphasise the point. "I'm so lucky to have you."

She's aware that she's not that great – well, frankly, she's terrible – at expressing her emotions sometimes, but this time she must have got it right because he rolls over to face her directly, a sparkle in his eyes.

"Really?"

"Really. I – I mean-" she stammers, not really sure how to proceed. She's thankful it's dark, because she can feel a blush creeping up her neck. "When he gave us this house-" she continues, not needing to specify who  _he_  was, "I was – I was a mess. I didn't want to know."

She pauses. This is the most open she's been in years, and it's uncharted, frightening territory for her. But he's Rory, so he doesn't say anything, or move, just squeezes her hand and silently encourages her to continue.

"I mean – it's not that I didn't want  _this_ , but –  _damnit_ , I just didn't know how to liveyour know?" she blurts out, her face hot with embarrassment. She's Amy Pond, for goodness' sake, she's supposed to be witty and smart, and not a complete wreck when it comes to some basic  _feelings_. "But here with you, in this life, I do."

She gazes at him, her eyes pleading, begging him to understand – which he does. Of course he does, and he proves by kissing her, closed-mouthed and tender. When he pulls back, the expression on his face threatens to stop her heart dead.

"It's what we always wanted, wasn't it? It's what  _he_  wanted. And," he adds, before hesitating, drawing the tiniest of frowns from her. "We have everything we'll ever need."

She returns his smile, all warmth and sunshine, but inside a storm is raging. Because she knows why he hesitated. There's a very good reason for it.

It's sitting at the bottom of a bin in the form of yet another negative pregnancy test.

* * *

It's the start of what she can only describe as a bug. A parasite, eating away at her mind.

It's small, so small, but as winter turns into spring, spring into summer, early sunsets into glorious twilights and the snow to sheets of stormy rain, she feels it grow. It's in the little things that she sees it happening.

It's in the way his gaze lingers over a mother and her child when they go shopping. The way he pays particularly close attention whenever a baby appears on television. The way he absent-mindedly glances over advertisements for baby products in the newspaper.

It's all in the brief looks, the roll of his tongue, the heaviness of his sigh when she tells him  _again_  that she's not pregnant (even though he always says it doesn't matter). All small things, too small for her to care about in isolation, too minor for her to ever mention, but she's always been reasonable at maths. And when she adds it all up, all those small things are starting to look like something quite a bit bigger.

She never mentions it. She can't. The fragile equilibrium they have is too precious to disturb and, well, they're  _happy_. Small problems are exactly that, and she never loses sight of the fact that she has by far the most important thing in her life, which is that Rory is happy to be with her. While he's happy, she's happy, and they can work out the rest on the sides.

The problem with that is that she doesn't know how.

Spring turns to summer, and passion turns to desperation, whispered endearments to invocations of what increasingly seems a futile hope. She spends longer and longer in the bathroom, staring first at those narrow bits of plastic and then at herself in the mirror when they fail to give her the news she so desperately needs. The rest of her hours there are spent with makeup in hand, carefully constructing and reconstructing that edifice she's built up over the years, that protective shell that keeps Rory from wondering too loudly or questioning her in the wrong places.

And when he does, her answer is always the same.

"I'm  _fine,_ Rory," she tells him yet again, her voice edged with steel. "So please stop asking, will ya?"

However, she knows better. As the first glimmers of truth appear on the horizon, the rationalisations begin. She repeats them to herself like a mantra, hammers them into her psyche to try and banish the demons growing deep within her.

She'll have a child one day, she tells herself, they're not the first couple to have these problems. She can't be infertile, as she's already given birth. She doesn't need a child anyway, as she already has one.

She receives a reminder of this fact late in July, on a sparkling summer's evening as meteors streak joyfully overhead. Her neighbours are all entranced by the unexpected display of the universe's splendour. She just smiles and gets a bottle of wine.

She's sitting in the garden listening to birdsong, the bottle and two glasses waiting patiently on the table, when one of the two people she most sorely misses returns with the usual crackle of electricity. Her lips curve into a slow, satisfied smile, but she doesn't turn to look.

"You're late."

"Sorry, dear," River Song replies, pouring herself a glass of wine. "Manipulator was being temperamental. Sent me all over the shop."

"Is that why I haven't seen you for over a year?" This time, Amy does glance quizically at her, an eyebrow raised.

" _Mother._  You know I try."

She'll never be completely used to being called  _mother_  by a woman who looks twice her age, but River – whom she still thinks of as Melody, as her  _baby_  – is a good daughter to have, so she takes it in her stride.

"So how are you, River?" Well, it's the sensible place to start, especially given that she has no idea what her daughter is up to in her far-off life.

"Good as ever. How are  _you?_ "

The inflection on the question pricks Amy's senses. It isn't a polite nicety, it's a genuine, proper question which demands a genuine, proper answer.

"I'm fine," she says for what feels like the millionth time.

That would have fooled many a person – and has – from the postman right up to her own husband, but River is her  _daughter_ , and less easily duped.

"Right. So how about the truth this time?"

Her reply takes the form of an outraged glare and stung words. " _Melody._  Don't you dare-"

"Amy," River cuts her off, using all her superior age to browbeat her mother into silence. "When it comes to lying, you're good, you're very good, but it takes one to know one. So tell me – what's wrong?"

That's a fair point, and one Amy can't argue with. More than that, if she can't be truthful with her one and, as it stood, only child, who could she be truthful with? However, there are still too many walls for her to break through before she can get to the truth and nothing  _but_  the truth.

"I miss him," she answers quietly. There. That's true, that would do.

"He hasn't come back yet?"

A shake of the head, resulting in a sigh in return.

"He'll come back for you, believe me," River says as takes her wrist, shaking it imploringly. "You just have to be patient."

"Couldn't you make him come back? I mean, you're still married to him, right?" It's a question she's been wondering for a long time.

River sighs again. "You know we don't work that way, Amy. The chances that I'd meet him at the right time are pretty much nil." Her voice is wistful, a reminder to Amy that she's not the only one that the enigmatic alien is slipping away from.

"So leave him a message, like you did with us on Planet One." Amy's never been one to give up a fight until all possibilities have been exhausted.

"That's still no guarantee."

"It worked that time."

"Not as I'd planned. I'd hoped to get you later on in your timeline when I carved that message – at a bare minimum, I'd at least hoped you'd know who I was." A pause as River sets down her wine glass. "Didn't quite work out that way, did it?"

"No," Amy agrees quietly, remembering that she isn't the only one who's been forced into leaving little white lies around themselves. She sits silently for a moment, deep in thought and wine, when part of the conversation she's currently having sticks itself out at her.

"You said I had to be patient. Any idea  _how_  patient?" It's worth a shot, she reasons. It's a good shot, too, because River smiles knowingly and leans back on her chair.

"Well... I don't know  _exactly_  when, but I could give a few hints," she replies with a slight smirk. "First you'll have to tell me when it is right now, though."

Amy has to stifle a laugh. "What, you don't know?"

"I told you, I got bounced around all over the place on my way here. I don't have a clue when it is right now – though I'm guessing it's some time since I last saw you," River adds shrewdly.

"Well, it's the twenty-eighth of July."

"July...?"

"2014."

She can see River muttering to herself once she divulges the information, as if doing calculations in her head, when the woman suddenly freezes and goes bone-white.

"Oh, it all makes sense now," River says under her breath, her voice two octaves higher than usual.

"River?" She doesn't like that River looks scared. Anything that could scare River Song is a big, big deal. "What's wrong?"

She expects an answer, and a damn good one. She doesn't expect River to roughly grab both her wrists and rub thumbs on the back of her palms, as if trying to comfort her over some calamity she isn't even aware of.

"Amelia." Her real name. Aside from her parents, she hasn't heard that from anyone in  _years_. "Listen to me."

"I'm – I'm listening." Her reply is cautious, as her daughter's sudden change of mood and directness of approach has thrown her completely off-balance.

"Something awful is about to happen, and I won't be there to help you." The words are low and frantic, but perfectly even, as if recited from memory. "The Doctor won't be able to help you either. You'll be on your own, but you'll be okay. Do you understand? Keep fighting, stay strong, and you'll be okay."

"What –  _what?_ " She can hardly believe her ears. "What the hell are you talking about? What's going to happen?"

"You'll find out soon enough. I think you might already know deep down," River replies shrewdly.

That could only be referring to one thing. She stares at her daughter for a single, frozen second, before rising to her feet so quickly she upsets her half-empty wine glass on the table. "If you know – if you  _know-"_

"I'm from your future, Amy," River says, her voice sympathetic but strangely serene, as if utterly unsurprised by Amy's outburst. And probably for good reason, given her words. "Of course I know."

"Then how the – how the  _hell_  could you say that something bad will happen but I'll be okay, but not give me any details? Am I infertile? And does this  _thing_ involve Rory?" Oh, she's angry now. She can feel it in her veins, white-hot fury pumping through her. It's not often she loses her cool like this, but when she does it's not wise to be around her.

Whether it's her mother's increasingly violent mood or something else, River seems discomfited for the first time. "I... I shouldn't say. You know, spoilers."

It's literally the last word Amy wants to hear. She wants to scream, to grab her daughter by the shoulders and literally shake the truth out of her, but she controls it. She's already ended up a murderer in one universe as a result of her temper, and she very nearly did the same in this one – with her almost-victim being Melody herself. She knows the consequences of losing self-control.

She lets out a grunt of sheer frustration and stomps away, pacing around the garden.

"So what  _can_  you tell me?"

"I've already told you as much as I'm allowed to," River says sadly. She can see the curly-haired woman struggling with her self-control as well and damn well she should, Amy thinks, because it's  _nothing_  compared to what she's been dealing with for the past six months.

"Just stay strong," River repeats. "Stay strong, and you'll be fine. You're always fine."

The words make her eyes flash dangerously, and she rounds on her daughter. "You can't say that. You can't possibly say – wait."

Though most of it is blinded by seething rage, one part of her mind is still working rationally, and it recognises those words. Repetition, after all, breeds familiarity.

When River had said she was from Amy's future, she hadn't thought the woman had meant it  _literally_. When she next speaks, her voice has calmed and her breathing has evened out a little.

"Wait. Who sent you here?"

River gazes her for a second, two seconds, her expression utterly unreadable before a smile breaks out. A slow, enigmatic smile. The woman unfurls her sleeve and starts fiddling with the vortex manipulator on her wrist.

"Spoilers."

"Don't  _spoiler_  me. Was it me? Did I send you in my future?"

"Amy, you know I'm not allowed to answer that," River replies quietly, still working on her manipulator. "One day you'll understand, and I wish I could tell you more, but I can't. So I suppose that this is goodbye for now, mother."

Amy's eyes widen to saucers and she scrambles towards her. She has too many questions she still needs answered for her daughter to leave.

"Wait –  _wait!_  When in my future do you come from? Am I actually infertile? Are Rory and I still together in the future? When will-"

A flash of light, a crackle of electricity, and Melody Pond is gone.

Amy stops dead in her tracks, lowering the arms she'd extended to try and keep a hold on her daughter. Her voice cracks, barely reaching above a whisper.

"When will he come back for me?"

* * *

Rory comes home an hour later. By then, she's cleaned up all evidence that their daughter had ever visited, washing and stacking away the wine glasses well before time. He doesn't suspect a thing, she knows, because his eyes are clear and his gaze straight. Though he does frown when she forgets to give him the usual welcome-home kiss.

By the time she's served him his plate of beef casserole, she's pushed her conversation with her daughter completely out of her mind. She knows that she has more important things to worry about, such as how Rory's work day had been.

"Busy," her husband replies with more than a little exhaustion. "There was a pub brawl of some kind, and about a dozen guys got themselves beaten up. Nothing life-threatening, but there wasn't much sitting down to be done for a few hours. How about you?"

"Oh, not much." The lie is effortless and automatic. "Just waiting for you, mostly."

Their conversation is easy and natural after that, but short – Rory really is exhausted and needs to go to sleep. She follows him soon after, just as a storm moves in overhead. She lies in bed listening to the rolling sheets of rain dancing across the rooftops, eyes wide open and a million miles from sleep as River's words echo through her head.

This isn't the first time she's had trouble sleeping recently and it certainly isn't the last. Rory notices but doesn't mention it until one night at the very end of July when, for once, she does manage to fall asleep early. But it's a troubled sleep, a disturbed sleep, with images of kidnap, cruel men with eye-patches, and a sodden, empty bundle of clothes-

She awakes with a gasp, her heart pounding and her breaths unsteady. Rory awakes as she rolls off him, drawing the blanket protectively to her bare chest.

"Amy? What is it?"

"N-nothing." However, the thinness of her voice says otherwise.

"Bad dream?" He places an arm on her exposed shoulder, trying to get her to roll over and face him. She doesn't.

"A – a bit. It's stupid, don't worry about it." She buries her face in the blanket, trying to hide her shame.

Rory reaches around her, draws her into the warm expanse of his chest. "Talk to me about it."

She tries to shove his arm away, not wanting his pity right now. She hates being pitied. "It's nothing, alright? Really."

He sighs, knowing that he won't get any more out of her. A kiss to the back of her shoulder and a loosening of the grip around her belly tells her she's won, but she doesn't go back to sleep like he does, his gentle snores filling the emptiness around her. All she can see, feel or hear, is that moment of pure horror replayed over and over in her mind's eye as her baby is taken from her again... and again... and again...

* * *

As always, however, she's fine by the next morning.

At least that's what she tells herself. In reality that's a lie too, and quite a big one because Rory is finally starting to notice. It's not as if Rory has suddenly become more perceptive – rather, Amy's shell is finally starting to crack.

It's the little things at first – it's always the little things. Her temper is shorter, her patience thinner and her irritability growing at a rate of knots. Her eyes flash when a door isn't properly closed, she snaps at at a joke she once would have laughed off. Little things soon become big ones, and by late August she's stopped greeting him at the door when he comes home, the meals awaiting him are cold leftovers and her back is turned to him when they sleep. The fire hasn't died, but it's spluttering and she can't work up the energy to keep it burning.

And he notices. Of course he notices. At first he blinks, taken aback, and shrugs it off, assuming that she's just having one-of-those-days. But then the days add up, and soon the shrugs turn into frowns, the understanding replies becoming edged with frustration. He tries to calm her down, get past the shell that has suddenly built itself around her, but-

"Oh, just go away, will ya?" she snaps, batting away the hand on her shoulder when he tries to ask why she's been brooding all evening. He recoils, stung.

"Amy-"

"I'm  _fine,_  Rory, now leave me alone."

He sighs. "Couldn't we just... talk?"

"No." And that is the end of that.

It's not like she means it, but she's stuck between a rock and the hardest place she could think of, so she just gets nastier, colder and more erratic. It doesn't take all that long for his tolerance, impressive as it is, to wear thin – even Rory Williams, he who waited two millenia for her, can't stand being treated like a stranger in his own home, which is what Amy is increasingly doing. She knows it too, but she can't seem to make herself stop.

And he – well, he hates it. As he makes abundantly clear one evening after a particularly callous remark.

"What's got into you, Amy?"

She stops, taken aback by his blunt inquiry. "The hell are you talking about?"

"You've been horrible to me for the last month. Seriously, what's going on?"

For one mad, brief moment, she considers telling him the truth. The whole, unvarnished truth – that she's sorry, she's so sorry, but she doesn't think she'll ever be able to give him what he always wanted. She won't be able to fulfil that dream of his, she won't be able to realise those stories he used to tell her about the family he so wanted to have one day.

But she's Amy and he's Rory. She loves him and she knows him, and she knows that he'll say it doesn't matter, it's alright and that he doesn't need her to, when – she can't. She just can't. So she doesn't.

"I have no idea what you're on about." Her voice is even, too even to be natural. She's trying to defuse the situation, but managing emotions has never been her strong point because it has the exact opposite effect.

"You don't, do you?" His voice is quavering with rapidly cresting rage, and he's shaking – oh, this is all going so very, very wrong.

Within minutes they're on opposite sides of the room, screaming at each other. Accusations, insults and denials fly left, right and centre, as they both play that terrible game where they try to push each other to the limits of their tolerance.

Predictably, the argument drifts to an old, rough saw that still lies between them.

"And since  _you_  don't seem capable of living without the bloody Doctor-"

"You think this is about him?" Amy's voice has cracked slightly from the screaming and her face is streaked with hot, angry tears, but she won't give in. She'll never give in. "This is _not_  about him. At all."

"Then what  _is_  it about?" Rory's voice is so loud that it shakes the table Amy is leaning on. His words are like daggers, and Amy hates it, hates every second- "Because I've had it, Amy. I've had it with  _you_  being so... so..."

"Say it.  _Say it!"_

He's not about to be baited that easily. "Amy, this isn't about me! This is about you, and why you've suddenly treated me like shit for weeks. And if you don't love me any more-"

There it is. At last the game is over, and Rory's won. It took half an hour but he's finally crossed the line, and they both know it.

His words die in his throat as Amy stares at him, her expression containing naught but shock and rage. Silence, frozen and terrifying, descends between them, the few feet separating them stretching into an endless abyss.

A voice in her mind, calm and rational, tells her that he's just angry and confused, and that his fundamental point is a good one – she  _has_  been treating him awfully lately. And if she can just  _stop_  and remember just how much the two of them still really  _do_  love each other, then it'll all be fine.

But it's drowned out by an avalanche of white-hot, twisted fury, and she struggles to keep her voice level when she next speaks.

"Get out."

The anger has drained from him like a deflating balloon, and he looks small, awkward and... scared. Very, very scared. "Amy-"

" _Out!_ "

A single, pleading stare, a stampede of footsteps, the slamming of a door, and she's alone. She collapses back onto her seat, shaking with silent sobs which threaten to tear her to pieces.

This wasn't the first time they they'd fought, but it was certainly the worst. Somehow, Amy knows that if she keeps on going as she's going it won't be the last time either. She feels trapped, shut into a tiny box constructed out of fear and lies, a cage of her own making, and she'll wither and fade inside it if she doesn't break free.

* * *

So she does. And, as always, it begins with the truth.

"So, Mrs. Williams, what can I do for you?"

Dr. Patel's query is professional and compassionate, but Amy can see the glint of curiosity in his eyes. With good reason, as the previous night, she'd finally managed to do what she'd been trying to do for the last month – namely, go an entire night without sleep. She must look a total mess, and she's already had to take the day off work.

"So, um, you remember at Christmas last year, when I, um, was a bit sick?" The words are falling out of her mouth a little too fast, as if she's suddenly nervous about doing something as drastic as tell the truth.

Dr. Patel nods in understanding. "I do. What's the problem?"

"Well, back then, we – I, um – you mentioned something, and – and since then, um-"

"Woah, slow down, Amy." He places an alarmed hand across hers, his eyes wide with concern as she trips over her own words. "Take a deep breath, and try again slowly-"

"I think I'm infertile." The words come in an almighty, uncontrolled rush, and she lets out a little gasp of surprise once they're gone.

There. That's the truth. At long last, the truth.

Dr. Patel leans back in his chair, a sombre air having taken over his kindly features. If he's surprised, he's too professional to show it.

"Okay. Why do you think that?"

"Well, Rory and I-" She pauses, suddenly finding her own palms extremely fascinating. "I mean, we've been married for three years, and we've been trying to have a kid for ages, but – but-"

"You still can't fall pregnant." A soft, gentle sigh of understanding accompanies his words. "I'm sorry, Amy. I really am."

"No, no, it's fine," she adds quickly, despite it being so untrue it actually hurts. But she neither wants nor needs pity right now; she'd rather have answers, before working out what the hell she does next. "Just – I'd like to confirm it, that's all."

"Have you talked to Rory?"

A shake of her head, drawing another sigh from the doctor. However, he seems unsurprised once again, and this time it's not because he's covering up. Clearly, he's seen this all before.

"Alright. You'll need to get that blood test-" she winces, but otherwise nods, "-and then I'll refer you to a specialist."

She nods, steeling herself for what's to come. Just one more request, then.

"Thank you. Don't tell Rory, okay? Please."

He studies her with wise, clever eyes for a second, two seconds, juggling all the competing instincts she can see written on his face – before he finally leans back on his chair, nodding.

"If you insist."

She exhales, letting out a tension-filled breath she didn't even know she was holding. At long last, she's actually dealing with something. Not ignoring it. Not running away from it. Dealing with it.

Even so, she's scared. Scared of what the truth will bring. She doesn't know what will become of her and she doesn't know what will become of  _them_. If her suspicions prove well-founded, and she can never have children by her own womb again, then-

Well, at least she'll have the truth. That's always a good place to start.


	4. Denial: III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But that was the problem, because she had never known and probably would never know simple. Impossible paradoxes, tangled timelines and unexplainable truths: that was Amelia Pond. She grinds down on the impulse, rigidly ignores her own screaming emotions and sticks to the plan.

Amy's not the nervous type, but she's certainly feeling a few nerves right now.

It's nothing to do with where she is, except that it sort of has everything to do with where she is. Rather, it's not the place that's making her feel so uncomfortable, what with the warm colours, inviting lighting and comfy chairs – it's the fact that it's a  _fertility clinic_  and she's, well, here. Awaiting her moment of truth.

She feels like she's on trial, with the judge being the man sitting opposite her and the evidence being the various tests she took last week. The fertility specialist is more or less the stereotypical doctor, white coat, woollen sweater, glasses and all, but Amy can't helped be unnerved by the keen fascination he takes in the test results. A feeling not helped when she can hear him murmuring under his breath.

"Amazing..."

"What?" Her voice is probably a bit too sharp to be polite – but damn it, she won't have people in her presence talking about her in hushed tones.

He seems appropriately startled, anyway. "Oh – my apologies. I was just looking at your blood test results; they're like nothing I've ever seen."

Amy's eyes narrow on instinct. "What d'you mean?"

"Your hormone levels – I've never seen anything remotely like them. There are also a few chemical agents here that I've never seen before, and nor had anyone at the lab by the notes here."

A sharp intake of breath. "But – nothing dangerous, right?"

"Apparently not. Still, someone must have put them there and I can't help but wonder why – but you'll know more about that than me, of course," the doctor adds suddenly, remembering his place.

 _And so he should_ , Amy thinks, because this is not the time to be going off on random curiosity-fuelled tangents. She's here for a reason.

"So...?"

"One moment. I need to take a closer look." He does so, carefully inspecting each detail, each result and each number on the long and complicated test results.

With each passing second, the doctor's lips narrow and his face falls, as if increasingly disturbed by what he's finding. With each passing second, she can feel more and more palpitations in her chest and hear the blood pumping in her ears. Deep down, from somewhere near her thankfully-empty stomach, she thinks she knows what's coming.

A minute, drawn-out and excruciating, passes before he finally sighs and leans back in his chair, his eyes still fixed on his computer screen.

"So you've been trying to have a baby for... two years?"

She nods, though she can't help but feel a stab of irritation at the fact that he didn't look at her as he spoke. And he's still not looking at her – whatever those results are, they must sure be something drastic.

"And you haven't been pregnant at all?"

Another nod, this one faster. If he reaches across the table and takes her pulse, she'll probably be ordered to go to hospital, because there's no way her heart beating this fast can be healthy.

There's a long silence, frozen and more than a little terrifying, one filled with such tension that Amy has this bizarre urge to scream out just to break the shackles. Finally, he looks at her and she inhales sharply in response, readying herself. This is it. This is the moment she finds out the truth.

When he speaks, his voice low, sad and sympathetic, she knows that this is the moment-

"I'm so sorry, Mrs. Williams."

-that her world crumbles around her.

* * *

It's a miracle, frankly, that she gets home in one piece. Upon leaving the clinic, she hails – screams, really – for the first taxi she can see, blurts out her destination to the driver and disappears into some dark, faraway place thereafter. She can vaguely hear the cabbie chattering away, trying to start up some conversation, but it simply drives her deeper into that little foxhole of hers.

She doesn't mean to be rude or anything, she just – well, she really, really needs to be alone right now.

When the cab finally pulls up in front of that little house of hers –  _theirs_  – she fumbles with her wallet, dumps a fifty pound note on the seat and flees, racing into her house without so much as bothering to close the cab door behind her. A few seconds later, she slams her own door shut behind her when she reaches her room, placing that protective, solid two inches of wood between her and the rest of the world.

She doesn't sob when she hits the floor, a crumpled mess against the door. She doesn't have the energy to cry any more. It all drained out of her, drop by drop, as the doctor shook his head and apologised in that same sad, sympathetic voice again and again. She'd tried, she really had, she'd suggested everything, tried to cling on to every last hope she could, but every time his answer had been the same.

_I'm sorry, Mrs. Williams._

A single, inadvertent tear rolls down her cheek, one she isn't even aware of. Really, this shouldn't be such a shock; she's known that this day has been coming for weeks, months even. But she's spent so long weaving her net of denials that when she finally falls through, it terrifies her.

She has no idea how deep the abyss; she has no idea how far she'll fall.

All she knows is the truth, the cold, naked truth, the simple statement of fact that she'd been avoiding for so very long now.

Rory wants children. She can't have them.

It's time for Amy Pond to stop lying to herself.

* * *

He comes home a few hours later – how many hours, she has no idea, except that a storm has rolled in, and the roof is groaning under the hammering sheets of rain.

"Amy?"

She curls up deeper into the bed, digging into it as if hoping it will swallow her whole. When he opens the door to her room, she shifts so her back is turned, her face hidden beneath the blankets, her think ginger hair providing a shield against the cruel, twisted world beyond.

"Amy, what's wrong?"

"Sick. Need a rest," she replies. Her voice is muffled in the pillows, hiding the tremor riding in her words.

It's a fair explanation, as she's taken the day off for that exact reason – in fact, she's taken the whole week off, ever since that... that night. Ever since  _that_  fight, they've barely spoken to each other, with only the most basic of courtesies, the most minimal of questions and the tersest replies. Even now, when he's so clearly worried about her, her voice is brittle, icy, betraying nothing of the abyss eating away at her.

Rory tries to feel her forehead and check up on her, but she just bats his hand away. Not a playful smack as she used to, but a rough, hard shove against his arm, pushing him away from her much like she's been doing for weeks now.

He gasps and stumbles backwards, clearly stung by her coldness. She can hear him sighing, a sound borne out of extreme frustration and exasperation. Even Rory's patience isn't infinite.

She just pulls the blankets over her chin and simply waits for him to leave... which he does, half a minute later, without another word.

They're falling apart, she knows, and she can't bring herself to stop it. Even though it might kill her if she doesn't. Even though she's the only one who can.

Perhaps she doesn't want to.

* * *

She does actually consider telling him the truth.

It's not a fleeting, instantly dismissed idea that floats in and out of her mind, either. Her nights, already sleepless, are now consumed by this wonderful, perfect idea, that she should just tell the truth and be done with it.

Even during the day, her mind wanders into this paradise world where she doesn't have any secrets, she doesn't weave any lies, and the two of them live out their days happily 'til they depart this world, hand in hand. They'd adopt, raise a family even if the children aren't of their own flesh and blood, and maybe, just maybe, have the occasional adventure with the Doctor when he finally comes back.

But life has never been quite that simple, has it? Not for her it hasn't.

She goes to more specialists, hoping that the first one is simply wrong, or maybe that some medical miracle would come and make everything right – but they all give her the same response. They all have the same sadness in their eyes, the same shake of the head, the same words on their lips.

_I'm sorry, Mrs. Williams._

She can't escape it: it's either adoption or nothing.

And, as she discovers early in September, adoption isn't a choice at all. It's a simple incident, so mundane that anyone else would have just laughed it off, but she's not just _anyone else_.

She's out doing the grocery shopping, browsing the aisles for bread and eggs, when she feels a small tug on her shirt and a high-pitched yell.

"Mummy!"

She gasps, turning down to see a pint-sized child, not older than four, clinging onto her for dear life. He's tall for his age, with a fair, freckled complexion, an unusually long nose, brilliant green eyes and light reddish-brown hair.

In other words, exactly what any child of hers would look like.

"Mummy?"

She shakes her head quickly, far too quickly, and her voice is paper-thin when she speaks.

"No – no, sorry, I'm not."

The child, however, is insistent, tugging on her shirt.

"But you  _look_  like mummy. How come you aren't mummy?"

"Because-" She struggles to find a suitable reason, an excuse, a lie, but it isn't forthcoming. "Because I'm not. I'm not your mother. Go on, now. Go and find your mum."

His lip wobbles and his young eyes are pleading, but he listens to her. Without another word, he turns and bolts down the aisles, yelling for his  _real_  mother and leaving her alone in the middle of the aisle.

She doesn't move or even breathe for the longest time, a hot rush of nausea rising unbidden up her throat. Just in time, she catches herself – she's in a supermarket, she can't just break down or throw up or do all the things she so wished she could do. She has appearances to keep up, so she just straightens her shirt and grabs a carton of milk from the shelf.

But it's the first and last straw, and when she gets home she  _does_  collapse on the floor and she  _does_  break down in tears. If she can't even stand a simple encounter with a child at a supermarket, how on earth can she hope to raise a kid, day in, day out, without falling to pieces?

Because, frankly, she's sick of it. She's tired of it. She's spent almost her entire life fighting against the universe, and she's had enough. She's had enough of the twisted guilt, enough of the sadness, enough of  _everything._  She doesn't have the strength to fight every battle or wage every war now.

If the universe says that she can't have children, then fine. She won't fight that. She doesn't need them.

The trouble is that she knows someone who does.

* * *

It's one night, as she's washing up after dinner, that she comes closest to telling him. They're still not speaking, letting the television fill the silences between them, but it's there that Amy realises how close she is to solving the whole problem.

Yes, they're not talking to each other. Yes, Rory is rather pissed off with her right now, and with good reason. Yes, they don't eat together, he's spending a lot of time at his parents' place instead of at home with her, and their backs are turned to each other when they sleep.

But they're still  _together_. He's still here, living with her, sleeping with her and washing up after her mess. Alright, they're going through a difficult period of entirely her making, but don't all couples do that? That's what marriage is all about, and they still love each other far too much to not be able to come back from it... if she were only willing to try.

She just knows that all she has to do is turn around, ask him to sit down, and  _talk._

She'll start by apologising.  _I'm so_ _rry, Rory... for being such a fucking awful wife these last few weeks_ , she'd begin. And he'll smile, chuckling at her bluntness, his eyes brightening at her honesty. It'll give her the courage to go on, she knows, and she will after that.

She'll explain what's been worrying her. She'll tell him about the time that River had visited... and then, at long last, after so many months of lies and denials, she'll finally tell the truth.

_I'm so sorry_ _,_ _Rory, but I can't give you children. I can't ever give you children._

And that's where it'll all go so very, very wrong.

Firstly, he'll look for an out. Just like she has. IVF, adoption, surrogacy – he'll pull out all the stops, she knows. When she keeps shaking her head, she'd eventually be forced to explain  _why_ this had all happened... which is the problem.

She's never talked about Demon's Run. Ever. Not a single moment of that time has been discussed. Not the excruciating childbirth, nor the torment and pain that was her month in captivity, nor the 'rescue' that had gone so horribly awry. Not once. Not ever.

But the tests strongly suggest that someone had tampered with her body, rendering her infertile. She's aware that the Silence had experimented on her before Melody's birth, the memories leaking into her Flesh avatar and manifesting themselves in nightmares as she'd slept. They hadn't stopped there, either, as they'd discovered that part-Time-Lord babies didn't just accept any ordinary milk.

The long and short of it is that she has very good reasons for never talking about Demon's Run, and that being forced into a corner where she  _has_  to talk about it... well, problem is an understatement.

But it isn't insurmountable. She's lied before. There's no reason why she can't do it again, or just come out and say that she doesn't know. That's technically true, as she doesn't. She just has a theory, a gut feeling... albeit one she's certain is correct.

No, the main problem will come later, after he's exhausted all his avenues of attack, just like she has. She'll apologise once last time, surely in tears by that stage.

_I'm so sorry, Rory. I wish it weren't like this._

Rory's predictable – part of the reason she loves him – so even here, from such a distance, she can see his reaction clearly in her mind's eye.

He'll lean back on her chair and sigh. A long, deep sigh, all exhaustion, sadness... and loss. She'll hear it clearly, the sound slicing through to her core. She'll hear the sound of a lifelong dream destroyed, of a hope dashed, never to be resurrected. And it will tear her to pieces, she knows. She'll break down right there and then, apologising to him over and over again. But that won't be the worst thing.

The worst thing will be when he comes around to comfort her, whispering endearments to her ear, carrying her to their bed and telling her that everything would be alright. He'll say – and prove – that he still loves her with all his heart, that even without children she's still the one for him, that they'll be together 'til death did finally part them.

He'll lock himself into her – no,  _she'll_  lock him into her – because they simply love each other too damn much. He'll banish himself to a stunted life with her, unfulfilled and forever dreaming that the impossible will happen. And all because she's too selfish to let him go, let him get what he wants, what he  _needs-_

"If you're not gonna do the dishes, shut off the bloody water."

She starts, jerked out of her own mind by her husband's sharp, irritated voice, and gets back to washing. If he's watching closely – which he isn't – he'll see her shake her head ever so slightly and purse her lips in determination.

_No._

She will  _not_  be that. She will not.

What makes Rory happy makes her happy, and if Rory can't find true happiness with her, then who is she to keep him?

* * *

In truth, their relationship is so far gone that it's actually pitifully easy. Pathetically so. In fact, she doesn't even  _do_  anything, she just keeps on rolling like she's done for the last month or two.

Except now, it's deliberate, meticulously planned and controlled, and she hates herself for it. She thought no one could make her feel worse about herself than House had, with his dreadful visions of Rory waiting for her, of Rory hating her, of Rory  _dead-_

But that's exactly what's happening, isn't it?

He's waited for the truth. He's waited until his patience, vast but not infinite, finally ran dry, and he's started to hate her.

"Do you, now?" Amy's voice is thick, hot with searing rage, barely controlled. "Well, then, you can leave. Go on, get-"

But he's pre-empted her, the slamming door cutting her off mid-sentence.

It becomes almost routine, ironically; she says or does something nasty, he bites back with an equally cruel comment, they fight and he storms out. A horrible, gut-twisting routine. Rory spends far more time with his parents than at home now, as clear a sign as any that their marriage, once the light of Amy's life, is disintegrating around her.

She's not sure which one she hates more, really: the two of them not speaking, or the two of them fighting when they do.

She decides on the latter; at least this way it won't be long and drawn out like some kind of slow, silent torture. No, this way is  _quick_.

So quick, in fact, that barely three weeks after Amy first found out the truth about – about  _it,_ they're fighting yet again on a moody, brooding spring morning. This time, however, there's something different. The air is heavier than usual, thickened with flashing glances and unspoken diatribes – and when  _Rory_  is the one to light the tinderbox, Amy knows immediately that this won't just be any other argument.

"We need to talk, Amy."

She's halfway through her make-up for the morning and even though she's heard it so often lately, the roughness of his voice startles her.

"About?" She fights fire with fire, her tongue clipped, her features rock-hard.

"Us."

She snorts, not taking her eyes off her own reflection in the mirror. "What is there to talk about?"

"Well," Rory says with mock sincerity, "I was  _hoping_ that you'd-"

"I don't have anything to say to you, Rory," she snaps, still apparently focussed on the application of her eye-liner.

She can see Rory's knuckles whitening on the door frame out of the corner of her eye, and there's something twisted and awful across his once-plain features for the briefest moment.

"Don't you?" His voice is quiet – far too quiet.

Her eyes snap to his reflection at last. "Rory-"

"Don't think I don't know what you're trying to do, Amy." He slips inside the room, taking a brief, halting step towards her. "You're trying to get rid of me, I know-"

"How can you say that?" Her voice cracks, astonished that he's seen through her. He's driven straight through to the truth, and for the first time she realises how fragile her scheme is, how easily it could all fall apart.

And she wants it to, how she wishes she could let it go – but she can't. She won't. She turns, her chin raised defiantly and her eyes blazing.

"You're wrong. You are  _so wrong-"_

"Am I?" His eyes flash dangerously and he takes another step towards her, forthright and aggressive. "You've been a  _bitch_  lately, Amy, and it's-"

She doesn't let him continue, however, because her hand has flown to his cheek without so much as a thought, the slap echoing through the bathroom. Her eyes are glassy with tears, the first exterior sign that his words are starting to cut to the quick.

"Don't you dare –  _don't you-"_

"Amy,  _listen to me!_ " Rory shouts, which in itself probably hurts Amy more than anything he says. He's not meant to shout, he's meant to be kind Rory, funny Rory, understanding Rory-

"We're not speaking," he continues, his voice levelling out ever-so-slightly as she falls silent. "We don't eat together. We don't do  _anything_  together. All we do is shout and scream at each other, and I  _hate_  it, Amy."

"And you're just going to blame me for it?" She doesn't know why she's getting so worked up, as everything Rory's saying is true, completely true – though, actually, that's exactly why she's getting worked up. It wouldn't slice so deep if it wasn't completely, totally correct.

Rory, for his part, isn't about to be so easily goaded this time. "Amy, I still love you. I still want to be with you – but I can't do this any longer. I can't put up with –  _this_. With being treated like a stranger in my own house."

She knows that, of course. She knows it all, and for a mad, fleeting moment, she again considers dropping the pretence and abandoning her plans. Because when everything else is stripped away, the truth is simple: she's Amy, he's Rory, and isn't that all that matters? It would be so  _simple..._

But that's exactly the problem, because she had never known and probably would never know simple. Impossible paradoxes, tangled timelines and unexplainable truths: that is Amelia Pond. She grinds down on the impulse, rigidly ignores her own screaming emotions and sticks to the plan.

"Well, maybe if you didn't spend so much time at your parents," she tells him bluntly, turning around to face the mirror once again, "that wouldn't be such a problem."

He's silent for a long, long moment, and she has to the resist the temptation to glance back and query him, knowing that doing so would risk giving away the plan.

"So that's it?" His voice has dropped, the fire and passion of minutes, days, weeks before having all but gone. "That's all?"

No response.

"Don't you care, Amy?" She can hear in his voice how much this is killing him, a half-whisper as his words shatter over the ruins of what they once had. "Don't you care at all?"

Her hands tremble, her knuckles whiten, but otherwise she just concentrates on her makeup – and,  _boy_ , does she have to concentrate, because her eyes are still shining with unshed tears.

He waits for her, hoping for an answer, but he's slowly realising that it won't come, it will never come. As Amy finishes her eye-liner, casually preparing for her work day as if he isn't there, it dawns on him that he isn't. Not really.

Amy and Rory. The girl who waited, the boy who waited. But now he's waited too long.

"Fine.  _Fine!_ "

The suddenness of the switch throws Amy completely. She spins around, stunned, only catching the slightest glimpse of his retreating frame. She tries to follow him, only to find a closed door and screamed insults meeting her. The scene descends to a blur, a wash of tears, long-buried frustrations and burning bridges, and Amy has no idea how much time has passed when Rory finally opens the door once more, brushing straight past her.

It's almost surreal, really. Words fly between them, but they're completely meaningless, automatic vocalisations which she doesn't understand and can't stop. Words like  _it's over_ and  _we're done_  and-

"So is this it?" He spits out his words, every syllable a gut-punch fuelled by rage and confusion. He's on the threshold of the door with a rucksack full of clothes slung across his back. Just one more step, and he'll be gone. "This is how it ends?"

To her ears, there's nothing in his voice but contempt and fury, but to heart she knows what he's  _really_  doing. He's giving her one last chance, one more opportunity to put things right, because he still loves her and she – can't.

She  _can't_  love him. Not any more.

She blinks back the mascara-stained tears that have been freely streaming down her face, raises her chin defiantly and folds her arms across her chest.

"Goodbye, Rory Williams."

She spends the rest of the morning staring at the space where he'd once been.

* * *

Her parents are the first to know.

At least, they're the first to know that's something wrong. She's barely even capable of holding the phone steady, let alone explain something that might be just a little bit important... that she's divorcing the man she loves.

But her mother can clearly hear that  _something_  is amiss through her uneven sobs and incoherent blubber, because Tabetha immediately shushes her, trying to calm her down. It's like Amy is a little girl in her mother's arms again, a reassuring and comforting voice in her ear.

"It's alright, Amelia. Your father is busy, but I'll be down there as soon as I can."

She lets out a strangled whimper, the closest approximation to  _thank you_  that she can find at the moment, hangs up and waits.

* * *

"Amy? Amelia, it's me. Are you there?"

It takes until the second knock for Amy to pick herself off the couch, stumbling towards the entrance hall. She wrenches the door open, revealing her mother's worried, slight frame on the threshold.

She must look a mess, she knows, the makeup she'd applied for work now strewn across her cheeks in thin streaks and her hair askew from the number of times she'd run her hand through it. It's written all over Tabetha's reaction to her, the way the woman's mouth falls open in surprise, the way her eyes widen.

Tabetha doesn't bother with a greeting, instead choosing to pull her daughter in for a warm, all-encompassing hug. She's always been perceptive when it comes to her Amelia. The ginger whimpers softly, digging her head into her mother's shoulder as her coppery-ginger hair intermingles with Tabetha's mousey-brown.

"There now, Amelia. I'm here. Shall we go inside?"

Amy disentangles herself and nods, letting her mother lead her to her own kitchen. Before she knows it, there's two glasses and a bottle of wine in front of her. The same bottle, in fact, that she'd opened for her daughter – who, of course, Tabetha didn't even know about.

Well, there are a lot of things Amy's parents don't know about her.

Tabetha sits opposite her, and she can feel her mother's gaze searching as if every last detail of her life is written on her face. She flinches – she doesn't like being opened up like so.

"So what's wrong, Amelia?" Tabetha asks as she pours out the wine, her eyes not leaving her daughter's face for a single second. "And where's Rory?"

Amy swallows, hesitates, swallows again.

"Rory-"

She stops, afraid to say it. Saying it will make it real.

"Rory – he's-"

She can't do it. Can't. Even though this is what she'd planned. This is what she'd wanted, how she'd planned it. He's supposed to be-

"Gone?" Tabetha reaches across the table, takes her hands and rubs them with her thumbs. Amy lets out a sharp gasp in surprise – oh, her mother has always been so wonderfully perceptive. "He's gone, hasn't he?"

She bites her trembling lip, nods her head as quickly as she can, and shatters.

* * *

If her head is in the right state – which it isn't – and she's capable of judging such things – which she can't – she'll agree that she's never, ever cried so hard or for so long in her life. The flow of tears seems endless, streaming down her face and onto her mother's shoulder, as if Rory's departure has opened the floodgates on every last sad memory, every moment of despair or every crushing defeat she's ever experienced.

But she's struggling to find anything that compares to this.

The last time she's felt anything like this was when she'd thought that the Doctor had been murdered before her eyes, or when Rory had died in her arms before that. That total emptiness, that sense of terrifying free-fall into the gaping maw that had opened up beneath her – that's the only thing she can compare this to.

Except he isn't dead, is he?

He's alive. He's well. And he's gone.

Just like that. Gone. He's departed, exited stage left from her life and taken the better part of her with him. In the space of two months, a mere footnote in time, they'd gone from happily married for eternity to... not.

Eventually, the tears finally begin to slow, her hiccough dying out and the wracking sobs damping down to a quiet trembling.

"Feeling better, now?" Tabetha asks from somewhere above her.

"No – well, a little," she modifies, determined not to project any more of her own despair onto her mother than absolutely necessary.

"What happened?"

Her first instinct, amazingly, is to tell her mother the truth. The full story, from start to finish, and her mouth even opens to do exactly that. But then she catches herself when she remembers what the full story entails.

She knows that Tabetha has no idea about the Doctor, beyond childhood stories and the madman at her soon-to-be-annulled wedding. She has no idea about her travels, she has no idea that she'd once fallen pregnant and she  _certainly_  has no idea about Melody.

So how does she explain? How does she put the circumstances of her pregnancy into words? How does she retell the story of her kidnap, captivity and the rescue that went so wrong? How does she admit that she has a part-alien daughter, and that in the process of bringing that daughter to life, she'd been rendered incapable of ever bearing children again?

How does she explain that her deepest, purest wish is to see Rory truly, genuinely happy, but that he can't possibly achieve that with an infertile, permanently scarred wife?

She can't answer any of those questions. All she knows that it would be long, complicated and, above all, painful. Too painful. She's had it with pain, she's tired of pain, she's tired of everything. So instead she does what she's done so often, and for so long.

"I – I don't know. It's – I can't. I'm sorry, I can't." Fresh tears threaten to leak from her eyes, but she controls them, catches herself before she tumbles into the abyss once more. She wipes her eyes, her lips curling into a thin smile devoid of warmth or genuine happiness. "Don't worry about me, mum. I'll be fine."

"But you're not." Tabetha objects, but her voice is still soothing, gentle and motherly. "You're not fine at all, Amelia."

Amy turns away, hiding herself behind her carefully crafted wall separating her from the rest of the world.

"I will be."

* * *

The Doctor's answer-phone never fails to make her smile.

" _Oh_ , blimey – okay, probably leave a message after the tone or something. Sorry, I wasn't really trying to do this; I was looking for the  _brakes-!_ "

Even here and now, with her cheeks glistening with tears, she can't help it. It reminds her of a time when nothing really mattered, when her head was amongst the stars. The beep comes, and Amy readies herself as best she can.

"Doctor?" Her voice is quiet – far too quiet. If he hears that, he'll know straight away that something is up. She collects herself and starts again. "Doctor? Can you hear me? Well, I _know_  you can hear this because you always hear these. I checked, remember?"

She takes in a deep breath, closing her eyes against the tears. This is dangerous, she knows, so dangerous. He control is so fragile that he'll almost certainly hear it in her voice, but, damn it, she needs him. She needs anything that isn't here and now.

So she keeps going.

"Moron," she adds, for good measure. "Anyway, assuming you  _can_  hear this, could you just – call me back? That's all. Nothing special, nothing major, just – call me back. Okay?"

She pauses, feeling the breath catch in her throat, yet another hot streak making its way down her cheek.

"'Cos, we –  _I_  miss you, you magical idiot..." Her voice has fallen away once more, a cracked whisper, and she knows she's seconds away from breaking – time to get out while she still can.

She hangs up without another word, knowing that  _goodbye_  is not something she can handle right now, and that-

"We need you, raggedy man," she whispers into the silence surrounding her. "I...need you _._ "

But the silence never answers back.

 


	5. Denial: IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her first thought is to completely immerse herself in normal life. She still has a job to go to, she still has bills to pay and groceries to buy. Even after two years, the sheer novelty value of a mundane, domestic home life hasn’t worn off on her, and she still inwardly marvels at the fact that she’s even allowed to live this sort of life with the past she has.
> 
> Of course, she was always supposed to live her domestic home life with him, wasn’t she? That had been the choice she’d been offered time and time again: normal life with Rory, or Doctor life with, well, the Doctor. For the longest time she had wanted both; now she has neither.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the chapter where you can drop the 'canonical' assumption.

Life goes on.

The Doctor taught that to her long ago: no matter how many times life tries to beat you over the head, you hit back and you remember that life goes on. So long as you're alive, so long as you're breathing and you have a fighting bone left in your body... well, you never know what's around the corner, do you?

Amy knows that she's been through way more than her fair share of hardship, but her response is always the same:  _suck it up, moron._  She knows that there's nothing to be gained by staying paralysed with despair; she has to move on.

The trouble is that she has no idea where to go.

Her first thought is to completely immerse herself in normal life. She still has a job to go to, she still has bills to pay and groceries to buy. Even after two years, the sheer  _novelty_ value of a mundane, domestic home life hasn't worn off on her, and she still inwardly marvels at the fact that she's even allowed to live this sort of life with the past she has.

Of course, she was always supposed to live her domestic home life  _with him,_ wasn't she? That had been the choice she'd been offered time and time again: normal life with Rory, or Doctor life with, well, the Doctor. For the longest time she had wanted both; now she has neither.

But she's  _alive,_ and that what counts...  _so suck it up, moron._

Nevertheless, though she's under no illusions that it'll be easy, even she hadn't expected it to be this hard. It's not so much the obvious things that get to her, not really. Things like the coldness at the side of the bed, things like the fact that (once again) she's living in a house too big for her – these are things she'd predicted when she'd first set this awful plan into motion.

It doesn't make it fun, or happy, or anything other than heart-breaking and all those other sad words, but it's  _controllable._  More than anything, Amelia Pond loves being in control, if only because sometimes she's so starved of it. If she can predict it, she can control it, and while it hurts like hell, if she can control it then she'll be fine.

But she can't control everything, can she?

It's staggering, really, just how often she's reminded of him, the ways in which the most minute details of life scream out at her. She sees him in the coffee shop they'd once liked to go to; in the dress she'd once asked him to buy for her; in the bus service they used to take to work together... in the divorce papers they haven't yet signed.

Well, he soon fixes that.

The best thing that she can say about it is that it happens quickly. Her modelling job consumes a mercifully large chunk of her life, so she doesn't have  _time_  to worry about minor distractions like divorce – and when she's forced to, she's too busy to take long over it.

Their words are business-like, terse, minimal... and then it's done. Her signature is on the paper, irrevocable black on white. That's it. It's over, and now she has to get back to work because she has a job to do.

He snorts. "Really? I thought you were just pouting at a camera."

It shouldn't hurt. It  _wouldn't_  hurt from anyone else – she's Amelia Pond, and she doesn't care what people think about her. But it  _does_  hurt... oh, it does.

"Rory-"

But he's already long gone.

* * *

Despite her best intentions and strongest efforts, she can't deal with everything herself. The official confirmation of the divorce is one of those moments, kicking her down just when she was starting to pick herself up again and sending her straight back to the abyss.

She's fired later that week: sexy and charismatic she may be, but she's also increasingly cold, prone to wild mood swings and unreliable, and they've got a business to run. She doesn't argue; she simply doesn't have the energy any more, and to be honest it's probably for the best as she doesn't go looking for any new contracts.

Though it had paid the bills and had been fun while it lasted, there'd always been a little part of her which found the modelling a bit discomfiting.  _Fake_ , even. And  _fake_  is a word that hits a little too close to home right now. She spends most of the next week at home, bouncing unanswerable questions off blank, whitewashed walls or sitting next to the answer-phone, awaiting a call that probably won't ever come.

It goes without saying that she's never, ever felt so alone in her life... although she isn't completely alone, is she? Not quite.

"Thank you, Sophia," she tells her friend who's just reminded her of that fact. "It helps."

And it does, surprisingly. Her worldview for so long has been tri-polar, consisting essentially of herself, Rory and the Doctor to the effective exclusion of everyone else. She often has to remind herself – or have others remind her – that life is a bit bigger than that.

Sophia, for her part, smiles and waves the bartender down for another drink. This has been a bit of a ritual for them lately, the two of them drinking well into the night at the bar, with Sophia's partner often joining them. Not that there's anything especially wrong with the drinking in and of itself, as they're still all young, sprightly people between the ages of twenty-five and twenty-seven, but Amy has her own reasons for spending as much time away from home as she can.

"You look terrible," her friend says, her brow furrowed. "Still not sleeping?"

"Not really," she admits - though in truth  _not really_  is something of an understatement. "Look, I've been better, but I'm coping. Don't worry about me too much, alright?"

Sophia looks like she wants to argue the point, but they both know that it isn't the time. Right now, Amelia Pond doesn't need home truths or tough questions; she needs friends. She's lost a fair few lately, mostly those who had been closer to Rory and who (quite reasonably) had been rather put off by her treatment of him.

The major consequence of that, however, is that she further cherishes those who  _do_  stick by her. She's aware that their motives for doing so vary: some of them are the kind who'll be friends with anyone, some are the kind who think Rory was at fault for the whole thing and some simply want to get into her pants.

She can take or leave all three but it's nice to have them around, and she doesn't even bother to fight off the advances any more. She's not quite ready to let them get a leg over yet, mostly but not exclusively boys, but she's always enjoyed a good flirt. It's also distracting, more importantly. Anything that distracts her counts as  _a good thing_  in her books, and it also tells the world that Amy Pond is getting back to normal,  _alright?_

Some, though, are there because they genuinely love and care about her. It is they, those closest to her, who know her well enough to see straight through her antics, Sophia being the foremost amongst them.

"What's got into you, Amy?" she asks sharply late one October evening, as the red-head joins her at the table.

Amy's had more than a little to drink by now, so it takes her a moment to process the question. "What d'you mean?"

"You've been hitting on everyone in this bar for the last half-hour. Including Laura, in case you hadn't noticed," she adds crossly.

That widens Amy's eyes. "Oh, shit – really?" She's slurring her words, her Scottish accent far thicker than usual – goodness, she must be seriously drunk, even by her standards. "Sorry 'bout that."

"She's not into gingers anyway," Sophia replies with a smirk. "Brunettes are more her thing."

"Yeah, yeah. Look, I honestly didn't notice, alright?" When Amelia Pond flirts, she flirts hard and without exception – even if that means she accidentally hits on close friends. Even when they're also the long-term girlfriend of another of her close friends.

"Hey, I didn't say I was angry at you," Sophia says soothingly. "It's just a bit weird, that's all."

"And here I thought ya knew me."

"You're not  _usually_  like this, Amy. Not since..." Sophia swallows visibly, hesitating. "Not since you got married."

A flutter passes through Amy at the words, her throat constricting, but she hides it. "I'm single now, I can do what I like."

"I get that. I just don't think you sleeping with every guy or girl you find halfway hot is a good idea, given that you were still married this time last month."

Amy's eyes widen in stark offence. "Hey, I'm not-"

"Not yet," Sophia interjects, "but at this rate, you will be soon."

"And if I do?" Alright, that's not her plan – but she's rather gone off planning recently. At least if it's fleeting it can hardly hurt her, can it?

Sophia sighs. She's been doing a lot of that lately. "Fine. Have it your way."

* * *

Less than a week later, Amelia does.

The guy's name is Jason (she thinks), he's a photographer (or a film-maker, she's not sure which), and he's French (or Italian, she can't quite place accents right now). More importantly, he's seriously gorgeous, he wants her, and he's polite enough to actually ask. As far as she's concerned, that's all her boxes ticked.

As they stumble messily into the darkened flat, all hands and lips, there's a part of her which is aware that this is so,  _so_  wrong, that this is even more  _fake_  than her modelling career had been. That she's only been divorced a month, that she'd told herself that it was Rory or nothing – and she'd chosen nothing. That she'd done what she'd done because she loves her now ex-husband. That her heart, such as it is, belongs entirely to two people and two alone: Rory and the Doctor.

But they're both gone, aren't they? That's the whole point – Rory is her  _ex_ -husband. Not her husband. As for the Doctor... well. River had  _promised_  that he'll come back one day, but when?

Such philosophical concerns, however, are quickly washed away by the feeling of the man's lips on her neck and his hands roaming across her body. She lets her head fall back on the pillow, sighing, and for a few fleeting moments Amelia Pond decides to forget who she really is.

* * *

She wakes up at the crack of dawn and she's already crying.

Not the wracking, uncontrollable sobs of several weeks back, of course, but the silent, occasional tears that she's more than prone to these days. She's not entirely aware  _what_ made her cry, as the dream seems to have slipped from her memory the moment it ended, and she'd rather keep it that way. It's not like this is the first time it's happened, after all.

The light filters through the curtains and she starts to remember where she is. Next to her, Jason is snoring in an entirely peaceful, satisfied way, alcohol on his breath, his arm wrapped loosely around her midriff as he pulls her gently into him. Instantly she feels very, very self-conscious, far more so than she's ever been before, and she slides away from him as gently as she can, pointlessly covering herself with the blanket.

Usually, the morning after sex she feels on top of the world, but not today. Today she just feels... flat. As if last night never happened.

She puts on her clothes again, which had been scattered randomly across the floor, and takes a moment to inspect the flat around her. It's small and minimally furnished, just as one would expect from basic student accommodation. It's on the grimy side, and there are unseemly black-brown streaks on the walls, but otherwise it's not that bad. She's certainly stayed in worse, like the time the Doctor had 'advised' Rory and her to pretend to be servants of an alien king-

It hits her so fast that she almost doubles over then and there. She bites her tongue to stop herself groaning – the last thing she wants is for Jason to wake up – and she races for the bathroom, reaching it in the nick of time despite it being mere feet away. Amazingly, he  _doesn't_  wake up at the sound of her depositing the contents of her stomach in the sink, but she knows that the best thing for her to do is leave. Right now.

What she  _should_  do and what she  _can_  do hasn't necessarily matched lately, though, because she knows that it'll take all her energy just to make it outside. So instead she locks the bathroom door behind her and sinks to the floor, her head in her hands.

She's still aware that Jason is asleep not far away, so she grinds her teeth together and tries to keep as silent as she can. It's not easy, and it takes every ounce of willpower not to simply let her despair flow for all the universe to see.

Instead, Amelia Pond sits quietly and listens to the soundless screams echoing through her.

* * *

When she finally collects herself, he's already awake and is cooking breakfast. There'll be no quietly slipping away now – though she tries her best.

"But you must have something to eat," Jason protests. "I insist."

She sighs. "Well, if you put it so nicely..."

She doesn't entirely regret it either, because he's has made her quite a lovely breakfast: bacon, eggs, tomatoes, sausages. Much like what she'd make at home – a comment that brings a crinkling laugh to his face when she makes it.

"Well, you  _are_  Scottish,  _madame._ "

So she'd been right with French. She returns the smile gratefully – she's mature enough by now to put her own histrionics aside and recognise an act of kindness when she sees it. Good thing, too, as she tries her best not to get laid with dickheads as a general rule.

"Thank you. You've been lovely, Jason-"

"Joseph," he cuts her off instantly.

 _Shit._  "Oh god – I'm so sorry, Joseph." The words tumble out in a hot, embarrassed rush. Even for her this is low – she hadn't even bothered to learn the guy's name properly before sleeping with him.

Joseph, for his part, has an embarrassed smile of his own on his face, and it's soon obvious why. "Not a problem, as I seem to have forgotten your full name, Miss...?"

"Pond," she completes him, relieved that at a minimum she's not alone in her mistake. "Amelia Pond."

His eyebrows lift slightly at her answer. "Oh – I thought your name was Amy. My apologies." She does a slight double take, because that isn't a mistake. Now that she remembers back, she  _had_  introduced herself as Amy, which was something she hadn't been doing often lately. Though, now that she thought about it, why  _hadn't_  she been introducing herself as Amy lately? That's her name, isn't it? Rory had always called her Amy, for one. He'd never used her real name once they were married.

"Amelia? Is there something wrong?" He leans forward to study her closer, worry written on his brow.

She jerks out her reverie, startled. "What? No." She shakes her head to clear it – she's fallen into the habit of staring blankly into space every time Rory crosses her mind, and given the situation it's a bad one. She recollects herself and puts on a warm smile for him.

"Anyway, I really should be off. Thanks for everything, Joseph." She leans forward to give him a light goodbye kiss – a good one, but a goodbye kiss all the same.

"It was my privilege, Miss Pond. Tell me, will I see you again? I would very much like that."

She should say no. She  _has_  to say no. This isn't healthy, this isn't good, she shouldn't lead such a patently decent man on like this-

"Maybe. We'll see."

* * *

Predictably, it becomes a routine. Once or twice a week, they meet at the bar, talk shop for a few hours, and then have breathless sex in his flat. It's never anything more or less than that, and she doesn't even tell Joseph where she lives, let alone invite him back to her home.

It's crazy and fun, but it's dangerous. While he seems delighted at first to be sleeping which such a stunningly attractive woman as her, after a while it starts to wear thin. He starts asking the wrong questions, frowning at the wrong times, clearly suspecting that her involvement in the 'relationship' is decidedly superficial.

"Oh, just shut up and shag me, will ya?" she orders from above him when he brings it up at a particularly awkward moment. He does so, silenced by the sharpness of her tone, and they're not talking much more after that.

She doesn't change anything. She can't. To her, this is a fling and nothing more, proof that she's moved on from her marriage, demonstrating that she can put the past behind her. Many of her friends are convinced (and disappointed in several cases) – but some aren't.

" _What?!_ " She almost falls off her chair when Laura airs her opinion on the matter.

"Oh, don't give me that. You two aren't-"

"He is not my  _fuckbuddy!_ " Amelia says the last word far, far too loud to be socially acceptable – though in such a noisy bar, who gives a damn? She certainly doesn't.

Sophia, sitting her next to her newly-engaged fiancé, just raises an eyebrow. "Really? So the two of you go to the movies, have coffee together, buy each other gifts, all that boyfriend-girlfriend type stuff?"

Amelia hesitates. She can't lie about this – not convincingly, anyway. "Well – no. We just... well, you know-"

"Fuck like animals." Laura completes the sentence in her own typically blunt way before sighing. "Amy, I know you're still hurting, but is this  _really_  the way to go about things?"

"Oh, sorry, I didn't realise you were suddenly the expert on these," Amelia snaps bitterly. "Listen, when you two have a messy breakdown,  _then_  come and talk to me about  _the way to go about things_ , alright? 'Til then: my life, my rules."

It's a singularly horrible thing to say, given that two ladies opposite her had only gotten engaged the other day, but they don't doesn't rise to the bait or fight fire with fire. They know her well enough by now to realise that despite all the nasty things she sometimes says and does, Amelia Pond is never, ever malicious or deliberately mean-spirited – she's just confused, more than a little frightened, and very, very lonely.

So instead, Sophia simply waits patiently for silence and then replies in a soft, gentle voice. "We're your friends, Amy-"

"Could you stop calling me that?" the ginger snaps across her friend, the words leaving her mouth before she's fully aware of what she's saying. "My name is  _Amelia."_

Sophia closes her eyes and starts again. "We're your friends, Amelia. If you won't listen to us, who the hell are you going to listen to? Or do you like being alone?"

Sophia is both clever and a good friend, because rather than inflaming the situation as is so often the case, the words have the opposite effect. Amelia deflates, the rage seeping away from her as she sinks back into her chair, suddenly feeling very small indeed.

"I'm sorry. I didn't – I just-"

"You're hurting. We know, Amelia, we understand _._ "

She nods, smiles, grateful for their kindness and friendship, two things that she so desperately craves. Even so, she's aware that her friends, though they're wonderful, they're also wrong. They don't understand.

No one understands.

* * *

She's been through this routine countless times now so it really shouldn't make her jittery with anticipation, but it still does.

She no longer wants him to come and fix everything. She knows that isn't his place, that life and fate are more than a match for the whims of a time-travelling idiot. She knows that some things are simply meant to be, and that time can't always be rewritten.

But that doesn't mean she doesn't want to see her stupid bloody raggedy man again, it doesn't mean that she doesn't hope to hear his ridiculous voice one more time. She won't even talk about Rory if she doesn't have to, she just...

Well, she just wants to talk to someone who will understand,  _alright?_

She presses the phone to her ear, her eyes squeezed shut in hope and trepidation, and waits.

_Pick up... please pick up... please pick up..._

She waits, and she waits, and she waits. She'll wait for the rest of her life if she has to... but, of course, telephones don't work like that, and nor do they make allowances for her feelings.

"Oh, blimey - probably leave a message after the tone or something... _"_

She lets the phone fall loosely from her hand, the handset clattering on the kitchen floor as the ring-chime makes way for that blasted answer-phone.

Again.

She lets her head fall onto the bench-top and stays there for hours, slumped over, staring aimlessly into the infinite distance that has suddenly filled her kitchen. She can't do this for much longer. It'll destroy her completely if she continues like this, and do so sooner rather than later.

But what choice does she have?

* * *

If her friends are sceptical about some of her recent life choices, it's nothing compared to what Amelia's parents think.

It's not overt or pushy, but it's certainly there when she visits Leadworth for her mother's fiftieth birthday. It's a refreshingly fun day and surprisingly pleasant for early December, mild enough that Amelia can actually wear her favourite skirt-and-denim-jacket combination, with matching midnight-blue scarf. It's a nice time to catch up with old friends and visit her parents in a more relaxed setting, as well as getting away from London and her troubles there. She's even set up her answer-phone to forward any incoming calls to her mobile, so in the unlikely event that  _he_  calls, she'll know.

But her troubles keep following her, and some of the questions her parents ask are... awkward, to say the least. They're not all overly tough questions, though. The ones about the heavy bags under her eyes (she hasn't had a decent night's sleep for months and months) and why she keeps staring blankly into the distance – those she can handle.

More difficult are the ones of a rather more personal nature – and sometimes they're not even questions. Not directly, anyway.

"So I hear you were dating this French fellow named Joseph," her father says – meaning, of course,  _what the hell were you doing dating a French fellow named Joseph?!_

She shrugs and waves it off, preferring not to get into this territory today and not remotely appreciating the judgment lurking beneath her father's words. "Nah – we were seeing each other for a few weeks, but that's done now."

Joseph had finally gotten sick of their relationship being sex and nothing else, and ended it several weeks previously. Amy can't particularly bring herself to care, as she'd had a string of compensatory one-night stands since then. A few of her friends say that she's finally falling off the rails.

She just calls it for what it is – a bit of fun, and a good distraction.

Augustus, in the present, looks a long way from convinced that the matter is settled. However, he knows that she's not going to give anything more than that, so he rapidly switches to his other point of concern.

"Very well. How's the job thing going?"

Amelia stiffens slightly, her fingers tightening on the champagne glass. "Alright."

"You haven't found one yet, have you?" Augustus might not have entirely approved of the modelling job, but at least it was a  _job_.

Amelia can't see a way out of this one. "Well... no. But I'm looking, dad. I'll find something."

The tone of voice is so off-hand, so lazily confident that she gives the air that she'll stumble across something suitable just by trying a bit harder. The truth, as always, is a little bit more complicated: without any university education, or even A-levels, her options are decidedly limited. Not for a lack of brains, of course, but with the economy in the shape it's in, getting a job is a tough ask for someone even in the best of circumstances and she certainly doesn't have those going for her, does she?

It's yet another not-quite-little problem on a rather large pile of them. She doesn't have the energy to solve them all, but this is one she can't ignore. Unemployment benefits are nowhere near adequate to fund her sort of lifestyle, so her bank account is already looking decidedly sickly. If she doesn't get a job soon, she'll simply run out of money entirely and then she'll be as screwed on the outside as she is inside – and, boy, isn't that saying something?

"Have you tried writing?" her father suggests. "You were always good at that, you could try-"

"Amy? Goodness me, is that really you?"

She almost drops her glass at the voice. She turns around, needing to confirm the evidence of her own ears before replying.

" _River?_ What are you doing here?"

The blonde woman looks just as shocked as she is, but River quickly collects herself and gives Amelia a warm, all-encompassing hug which the ginger heartily returns – after all, what's a few awkward questions next to seeing her daughter again?

"I got lost. I didn't expect to see  _you_  here," River says as she breaks off, smiling warmly.

"It's mum's fiftieth, of course I'm here," Amelia replies, still mildly astonished to see her daughter. "How did you not expect to see me?"

River shakes her head. "No, you don't get it – I  _got lost_." The emphasis she places on the last two words gives the game away: the manipulator must be playing up again. In fact, now that Amelia looks her daughter up and down, it hits her that River's wearing exactly the same clothes as last time, meaning this is probably either immediately before or immediately after their meeting in the garden for her daughter.

Her parents, of course, know none of this, and they immediately remind her of this fact. "Er – Amelia, who's this?"

"Oh-" She's forgotten that her parents have never met their granddaughter – not in this guise, anyway. "This is River Song, a friend of mine. She's an archaeologist, with, um..." She breaks off, throwing a pleading glance in River's direction – she needs a cover story, and fast.

"Imperial College, London," River continues effortlessly, as if she had the line long-planned in advance. "And it's Professor River Song, in case you were wondering."

Both her parents are sufficiently impressed to not inquire further about their relationship, and the conversation quickly progresses to small talk and swapping stories, which Amelia quite enjoys. Not least because she can't tell if River is telling the truth, lying, or (most likely) a mixture of both: the story about excavating the Chinese terracotta warriors  _seems_ plausible, but on closer inspection, some of the details are suspiciously similar to what had happened aboard the  _Byzantium_.

Either way, Amelia has something rather more important on her mind right now, and they both know it. They excuse themselves half an hour later for a walk by the creek surrounding Leadworth, and it doesn't take long for Amelia to get to business.

"So where are we?" It's the standard ice-breaker between the two, though Amelia already suspects she knows the answer.

River immediately confirms her instincts. "I got bounced here after I left your garden – it's late 2014, right?"

Amelia nods her confirmation. "Yeah."

"So, basically we're in sync from last time, which is a nice change."

"Yeah."

They walk in silence for a while after that, but it's an uncomfortable one – the words Amelia knows she needs to say are on the tip of her tongue, but she can't spit them out. Enough water has passed under the bridge by now that she doesn't feel like breaking down every time she has to talk about it, but that doesn't make it easy – even when involving one of the only people she knows she can be totally open with. Old habits are hard to break, after all.

Eventually, the silence stretches on long enough that River is forced to intervene.

"So, Rory-"

"Yeah. He's gone." The words, harsh and bitter, fall from Amelia's mouth, breaking on the wild green grass around them. The wound is healing, but the scar tissue is still raw and sensitive to the touch.

River sighs and leans on a fence overlooking the creek. "I'm sorry."

"You knew, didn't you? You knew all along." Amelia knows that she shouldn't take her repressed frustrations out on her daughter, but goodness it's a struggle. Her words are sharp and clipped, and she has to fight to control herself – this is one relationship she will do  _anything_  to preserve, and she can't let her own free-wheeling emotions jeopardise it. That's already happened far too often.

"You've already worked out that you're the one who sends me from the future – of course I knew. I know why you did it too, before you ask."

"Got more foreknowledge, do ya?"

Melody Pond looks down at the tumbling stream below, a rare gesture of weakness, and shakes her head. "I learned about some of the experiments they were doing, and I heard about what some of the guards did to you." She looks up again, a mournful, startlingly  _empty_  look in her eyes. "If it's any consolation, I would have done exactly what you did. Mother... I am so, so sorry. For both of you."

Amelia sees it instantly – Melody's blaming herself for what's happened to her, what's happened to  _them._  If she hadn't fallen pregnant, if she hadn't mothered a weapon for the Silence –  _no_ , damn it. This is  _their_  fault and her own, not her daughter's. Never her daughter's.

"Hey. Come here." Any irritation now totally forgotten, she shuffles across and wraps an arm across her daughter's shoulder, letting Melody rest her head in the crook of her mother's neck. "It's life, Melody. Just life."

* * *

It's without question the best afternoon Amelia has had in months. Certainly it's the best since before her previous encounter with her daughter, which in many ways had set the stone rolling inexorably down the cliff-face. Even thinking back past that, though she's seen Melody plenty of times in her life in all of he daughter's various forms, they've rarely ever had a moment like this, just a mother and her daughter.

It's cathartic, really, having this golden opportunity to sit down and  _talk_ , without fear of misunderstanding. The weather is closing in around them, the fragile warmth dissipating into winter chill, but since when did she care about that? Far important is the fact that here, with her daughter, she can say those things she can't say anywhere else.

For the most part, Melody is silent as Amelia speaks. She doesn't say much, and she doesn't go into detail – but she doesn't need to. Either way, Melody is more concerned about Amelia as she is now, not as she could have been.

"Ha. So says you," Amelia retorts with a wry smile on her face.

"Am I not allowed to be worried?"

"Look, it's a bit rich for  _you_  to be complaining about me having too many boyfriends-"

"Or girlfriends," Melody adds, wearing a smirk of her own.

"Or that. Partners, let's just say. But it's my life, my rules, ya know?" She softens her words on account of it being her daughter, but that doesn't mean she's about to let anyone tell her how to live her life. No one – not Sophia or Laura, not the Doctor, not even Rory – had ever been able to do that.

Melody nods, understanding. "Still,  _partners_ is a bit of a strong word for what you've been talking about, no?"

Amelia hesitates, caught off-balance by the question. "Well, no – more like friends-"

"With benefits. Trust me, I've had plenty myself." Melody eyes her closely. "You know why your situation is different, though."

She pinches her nose. "Look, I just need a-"

"Distraction. Yes. I'm not blaming you; I'm just worried that you'll get into a mess that you can't get yourself out of, and you'll be hurt. You've already been hurt enough, mother."

Amelia turns her face away, gazing into the gentle eddies of the flowing creek. It was on days like this that she used to make Rory play those dress-up games as a child, with young Melody herself often tagging along for the ride.

"It's not just that," Amelia begins, her voice soft and distant. "When I'm – when I'm with them, I can forget. I can just... lose myself, ya know? I can pretend that it's all okay, that Rory is still there, that he's the one making me feel that way. And I..." She buries her face in her hands, determined not to let her daughter see the tears which have suddenly materialised in her eyes.

"I know it's wrong. I know it just hurts me and that I should stop. But I can't, because it's the closest I can get to the way Rory used to make me feel, and I just... I just..."

"You can't let go," Melody murmurs, brushing stray locks of coppery-red hair from her mother's face. "I know, Amelia.  _I know._  But you have to try."

"Why?" The words are harsh, colder than the winter air, coloured by dozens of lonely evenings and sleepless nights. "For what? I've been trying my whole life, but what am I fighting for now?"

Melody doesn't answer her question directly – instead, she has a question of her own. "And how long do you think you can go on like this?"

"Who knows? A few weeks, I guess. Months, maybe." The most shocking thing, really, is how little she cares. Where is her famous fighting instinct, where is the will to push through that had once driven her?

"Rory wouldn't want to see you like this," Melody replies, her voice low, imploring. "He wouldn't want to see you wasting away like this, driving yourself to oblivion."

"But Rory's gone," Amy points out. "So what's the point? The Doctor's gone. My parents don't understand. My friends don't understand."

"Only because you haven't told them the truth. You need your friends, Amelia. Until  _he_  comes back for you... your friends and your family are all that you and I have."

"They won't believe me, alright? There's no way in the world they'll believe me."

"You don't know that until you try."

Amelia looks away, her expression clouded. She knows that she should, that she can't continue living in solitary denial. That her friends and family are the only thing keeping her crawling onwards, keeping her hanging on by her fingernails now that she's lost almost everything else, but...

"I can't tell mum and dad, okay? It'd kill them, learning about all these things that have happened to me and realising that they weren't around to help."

Melody nods, understanding. This burden is Amelia's to bear, and Amelia's alone. If she's going to tell someone, it'll be as a friend asking for understanding. Not as a daughter seeking help, nor as a lost girl requesting pity.

And even then, she can't talk, she can't start to really move on until she knows one last thing.

"Will he ever come back for me?"

Melody takes her hand, rubbing it gently.

"He will. One day he will. I can't say how, I can't say when – but he will. And his time he won't leave. You're not alone, Amelia, even though you think you are."

She's heard that promise before, she's heard it so many times, but she doesn't believe it like she used to. Once upon a time, simply hearing those words from her raggedy man's mouth would be strength enough to pull her through the darkest of times, but he's betrayed her trust too often and her answer-phone is still silent.

Hearing those words from her daughter, though...

She doesn't dare believe it, but it sounds a little bit like hope. And, really, hope is all that Amelia Pond has left.


	6. Denial: V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whether it's loneliness, whether it's stress or some other stupid thing, on one or two occasions she's dragged right to the edge of the abyss again and she wonders what it would be like to jump. But she always pulls herself back. She cries, she screams, she hurts herself and hates herself, but she always, _always_ finds a way to force herself out of today and into tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last part of this first act of the story, and the last before the Doctor "returns".

It's Christmas.

As such, it's Amelia Pond's favourite time of year.

Or, at least, it used to be. As with so many things of late, Christmas is different this year. No more flames in the hearth – she can't spare the money to buy firewood. No more fairy lights on the ceiling – she doesn't know how to do it herself.

Somehow, that's what everything in her life comes down to these days: she's alone and she has no money. She certainly knows which one of those hurts her more, but the other has become a serious problem.

Being completely honest with herself, she knows that she'd never been the most consistent contributor to the finances whilst she'd been with Rory. Modelling jobs were chaotic by their nature, especially given that she never held one for longer than six months. So sometimes she would be bringing in the cash like she was swimming in the stuff; other times she'd go weeks without making a quid.

As such, the situation she's in now isn't that new, it's just... slightly more permanent. And, more to the point, she doesn't have Rory here.

If it weren't so desperate, she'd burst into laughter – she can't even move on from him when she checks her  _bank balance._  She's somehow managed to rack up a rather alarming amount of debt – no doubt the product of her recent lifestyle. She has enough money saved to fend off the banks for now, but soon that'll be gone too. And then...

Well, then she's just plain screwed, isn't she?

A particularly twisted, caustic side of her finds it amusingly ironic: she's done the trifecta. She's burnt her marriage, she's burnt half her friendships and now she's burning her money.

The thought is almost enough to make her laugh, or maybe cry – but she catches herself just in time, shakes her head and returns to chopping her vegetables. A distant corner of her mind wonders when she'd become so easily distracted and introspective, but it's a question that's easily answered anyway.

At some point in the last fortnight, she'd finally decided to stop running. Stop lying, stop living in denial, and stop trying to recreate something she can never have. It had been something that Melody had urged her to do, and she's smart enough to see that it's for the best, that a light would eventually appear at the end of the tunnel – but here, now, alone and increasingly impoverished, it's sometimes hard to keep perspective.

She closes her eyes and puts down the knife, a tired sigh escaping her lips. She shouldn't be thinking like this. Not only will it do her no good, it's not  _her_  full stop. Above all else, Amelia Pond is a survivor, and she knows that she  _will_  survive whatever fate happens to throw at her-

A shrill ring pierces the silence without warning, and Amelia's eyes fly open again.

_The phone._

Fuelled by sheer instinct, she almost trips over herself in her rush to reach the buzzing phone on the opposite side of the kitchen. Her hands are trembling so much that she almost drops the handset as she presses it to her ear.

"H-hello?" Her voice is timid, nervous, uncharacteristically so. If it's him... if it's  _him-_

"Hey Amelia, it's me."

It's not him.

She closes her eyes, letting out a breath she didn't even know she was holding. She silently curses herself for being so stupid  _again_.

"Oh – hi, Soph. Merry Christmas." She keeps her voice light and airy – over the phone, it shouldn't be too hard to disguise her emotions.

"And the same to you. How're you doing?" As usual, Sophia gets straight to the point.

"I'm fine." The words flow from her mouth before she's aware they're gone. Well, so much for not lying. "How about you?"

"Good, good, Laura's parents were just over..." Sophia trails off, either distracted or finding the attempts at small talk a bit too obviously forced. By now Amelia knows her friend well enough to know that this probably means she has something  _important_  to say, so she keeps quiet and waits.

A few seconds later, Sophia seems to decide that she'll dispense with preamble and just barrel on in a voice much too bright to be totally natural. "Say, Amelia, how about Laura and I come over for dinner? I mean, right now. Both of us, over at your place." The words come out in a rush, like Sophia had been itching to make the offer all along.

Amelia hesitates slightly, humming in a non-committal manner. "Now? But-"

"You're not doing anything else, are you?" Sophia asks, her voice a tad high-pitched from eagerness. "No one else coming around?"

"No, but-"

"See you in a bit, then."

The line goes dead.

* * *

They arrive half an hour later in a swarm of hugs and excitable gossip. Their demeanour is sunny and warm, but far too much so and Amelia isn't so easily fooled. She decides to bite her tongue for now, and lets them help finish making dinner. After all, it's Sophia's recipe – glazed roast ham.

Same as last year, although with healthier ingredients - Amelia is still sticking to the rabbit food diet. It's the least she can do.

And it's nice, really. She's become increasingly withdrawn and unsociable over the last few weeks, as the emotional and financial stresses have really begun to take their toll, so it's good that she still has friends willing to reach out to her like this. It's refreshing, being able to just have Christmas dinner with friends and forget all about her problems – until they unexpectedly come back.

As they always do.

"Pardon?" Amelia's voice is still level, and she wants to make absolutely sure that she's heard correctly, but there's something hot and raw building at the base of her chest, and she's sure it isn't just wine. She's developed a rather unusual sensitivity to off-hand comments about her personal situation lately – unusual for her, anyway – but she's willing to give her friends a  _little_  leeway.

Laura, however, seems oblivious, not to mention tipsy. "You should turn up the heat, Amelia, it's bloody freezing-"

"Put on a goddamn jumper then," she snaps, not letting Laura so much as finish her sentence before letting her repressed frustrations loose. "Unless you've forgotten that they cut off my gas, like I told you  _last week_."

The conversation dies in an instant, the air suddenly blanketed in a deep chill that has nothing to do with the unheated house. Sophia puts her knife and fork down, looking at the ginger with a tired sigh.

"Amelia-"

"Look, why the hell are you two even here?" Once started, Amelia usually finds it rather hard to stop and this is no exception. She looks between the pair of them but their faces are impassive and their eyes averted. She'll get nothing out of them unless she pushes – which she does, of course.

"Come on, spit it out. You said last week you're having a quiet dinner to yourselves for Christmas, and then, out of the blue, you just randomly decide to come over on a whim? What are you  _really_  playing at?"

A nervous glance passes between her friends, Sophia hesitantly opening her mouth to attempt some kind of half-formulated explanation... and it clicks.

Oh, it clicks.

"Oh," she murmurs, the realisation dawning on her. "Someone put you up to this, didn't they?  _Someone_  asked you to come over here to have a chat."

"Amelia." Sophia tries again, but she never gets any further.

"Where is she?" Amelia's voice has risen, and she's standing up. " _Where is she?_ "

Sophia and Laura are momentarily stunned by her sudden shift into frenetic activity, and their hesitation costs them any real opportunity to stop Amelia dashing to the front door. She wrenches it open-

-but only gets a glimpse of wild blonde hair and a knowing half-smile before Melody vanishes into the still Christmas air.

* * *

It's not as bad as she first fears and also much, much worse.

Because it turns out that, as they'd told her, Sophia and Laura  _had_  planned to spend Christmas together, in their new home. And while Laura's parents had dropped by, it had only been for a brief time, leaving plenty of space in the day for an unexpected visitor to drop by and deliver the mother of all bombshells about their close friend.

And it's not like Melody has only dropped oblique hints or vague outlines either. From the looks of it, she's apparently gone and told them Amelia's life story.

" _All_  of it?"

"Well," Sophia equivocates, "she told us about the Doctor, she told us where you went when you kept disappearing for ages a few years back and that you, um..."

She seems to lose her nerve at that, as if fearful that Amelia might lash out at what she's about to say next, but the ginger fixes her with a level, piercing gaze which few can withstand, and Sophia is no exception. She swallows apprehensively, before continuing in a voice much quicker and half an octave higher than usual.

"She told us that you fell pregnant, and you didn't know. And that you were kidnapped and gave birth to a daughter in captivity. Who was – was, um, taken. And, um, and that you never saw your baby ever again."

For a moment, Amelia doesn't visibly react. She just sits there, still, her face impassive, revealing nothing of the maelstrom that has just been unleashed within her. All the lies, all the misdirections, the denials and false smiles, the running and the hiding, the loneliness and guilt, all of it was to avoid exactly this.

All of it was to try and cover up the cracks snaking through her defences. But now, here, she knows that it'll just take one push, one little shove in exactly the wrong place, and-

"Is that – is that true?" Sophia asks hesitantly, fearful of pushing Amelia in the wrong place... which, of course, is precisely what she's done.

"Yeah," Amelia replies quietly. "It is."

She looks up for a moment, catches a glimpse of their faces – kind, understanding, compassionate and all those other things she doesn't really deserve – and starts to cry.

By the time she stops, it's no longer Christmas.

* * *

She says a lot of things as the night wears on.

By her standards, anyway. A lot of it is just filling in the gaps in the story, giving context and making sense of her past – as much as she can, anyway. She clarifies every point, answers every question, tells the truth to her best of the ability, and only stops when it starts to cut a little too deep, or hits on a spot which is still a little too raw.

At  _those_  times she stops talking and – well, it's not fun.

It's not  _all_  talking. She cries and cries, more than she was aware she was ever capable of. She screams and yells a bit, mostly when the wrong questions are asked or the wrong conclusions drawn – though she suspects that Laura in particular is deliberately provoking her to saying those things which simply  _need_  to be said, even if half the street can probably hear her. She even laughs occasionally at a dry joke or a bitter irony that points itself out, but she never smiles.

She can't recall the last time she did that. Mind, that doesn't include the sultry, seductive smile which is almost guaranteed to land her in a breathless one-night-stand. Nor does it cover those quick, flashing smiles she gives to accompany those two awful words she keeps saying:

_I'm fine._

No, when it comes to the genuine smile, the smile that only exists under shining sun and in peaceful happiness, she's all but forgotten about those.

She wipes her eyes with a napkin and drinks the last of the wine, shaking her head and sighing in a way that exposes just how broken, just how exhausted this mess has left her.

"I just miss him," she says quietly, in a voice so cracked it's near-inaudible. "I mean, these last few months... yeah, they've been horrible, but I had to do it, alright? I  _had_  to. It's not that... it's just that I  _miss him._  And I... I just wish he could come back somehow."

But she never specifies who  _he_  is.

* * *

It's not all crying either.

Somewhere, in the dark and twisted recesses of her mind, she's aware that what she desperately needs right now is an escape of some kind, a chance to break free of the asphyxiating routine she's fallen into and just  _get out._  But she has no money, does she? So-

"We'll give you some," Laura interjects immediately.

Amelia looks up at her, astonished, but Laura simply nods her head, her expression sombre. Sophia looks a little surprised, but also seems to be on board with the idea.

Amelia is thrown completely by this. Nothing, absolutely nothing in her mindset prepares her for such a simple, pure act of generosity. "But – hang on-"

"Hey, it's cheaper than a funeral," Laura jibes with a smile. Amelia chuckles along, but somewhere deep down she's aware that it isn't really a joke.

The upshot of it is that two days later, she's standing inside Waterloo Station in her warmest, blackest coat and wearing a backpack full of clothes. She's not entirely sure how this is meant to work, so she just stands there, trying to avoid the glances of the crowd as it moves this way and that.

Although she's looking forward to this – the first time she's been able to use those words in months – there's still something deeply disquieting about it, about  _waiting_  like this, about having to scrounge money from friends after a lifetime of self-reliance. Fortunately, she doesn't have to think about that for long, as a familiar voice breaks through her reverie.

"Hey."

She turns to see Sophia standing right next to her, complete with beanie, travelling coat and a heavy backpack much like her own. At first Amelia is more than a little perturbed at her appearance, a little confused by what she sees – until she spots what Sophia is clutching in her hand.

Train tickets. Two of them.

Her eyes snap up to her friend's, wide with undisguised surprise. "You're coming with me?"

"Wasn't about to miss a trip to Paris," Sophia replies with a warm smile. "I've got a few hundred euros in my wallet too, which should be enough to last the week."

Amy doesn't really know how to reply, or how to express her emotions, or really what to say at all – so she doesn't. With a laden backpack weighing her down, the hug is a bit awkward and brief, but it seems to get the point across.

"Thanks," she murmurs for good measure. "Is Laura coming?"

"She wanted to, but... y'know," Sophia replies, shrugging. "Work. It was a struggle for me to get time off as it was."

"But you're here anyway. So just you and me, then?" She's naturally disappointed that her second closest friend won't be coming as well, but one is better than nothing.

"Just you and me."

An hour later, they're on the train and heading towards Paris, watching the French countryside flash by. The oppressive gloom of London had opened up slightly as they headed south, thin streamers of sunlight eking their way through the layers of thick cloud, and even from the train there's an intangible beauty and tranquillity to the scene. It's somewhat mesmerising, and Amelia can't help but rest her head on the window and gaze outwards as the trees and fields rush past.

It's more than just admiring the view, though. After all, as far as pretty countrysides go, northern France is lovely but it's no patch on the Eye of Orion, for example, or the Glittering Fields of Aglaron (which were very much glittering) or a hundred other impossible, unforgettable sights that her Doctor had given her the privilege of witnessing-

"Amelia? You okay?"

She starts slightly, jolted by Sophia's unexpected interruption to her train of thought, but quickly settles and turns slightly to return her friend's gaze with a thin smile.

"Yeah. Fine. What's up?"

Sophia puts down her novel and takes off her reading glasses, so as to study her friend more closely, but Amelia averts her gaze.

"You're quiet," Sophia says softly, with the obvious implication that Amelia Pond is rarely ever quiet – in days gone by she'd always had something to say, whether it be a excitable stream of gossip or an battery of acidic witticisms. "What are you thinking about?"

"Hm? Nothing." It's a particularly lame answer but she can't find a better one right now.

"Really?"

"Really. Just looking forward to Paris, ya know?" Her tone is off-hand and disarming, and it seems to work, because Sophia doesn't push further. Instead, she just follows Amelia's gaze out the window. For a few minutes they just sit like that, lost in their own thoughts and in the blur of greens and blues as the train rushes onwards.

"Did he ever take you to Paris?" Sophia says eventually, breaking the silence. "Your friend, I mean. The one you told us about."

To her own surprise, Amelia chuckles lightly, a melancholic half-smile working its way to her lips, one that probably doesn't quite reach her eyes. "Yeah. A fair few times. I loved it."

"You really, really miss him, don't you?"

It's seems such an obvious question to ask, but it makes her breath catch in her throat, caught totally off-guard by both its simplicity and by how it just seems to break through all those defences she's constructed, piercing right to her very core.

She closes her eyes, the sad smile not having totally left her lips but her demeanour shifting slightly, becoming more distant as a solitary tear rolls down her cheek. In her mind's eye she can still see him – see them, her boys, in the TARDIS, cavorting through time and space...

"More than you can imagine."

* * *

She loves Paris.  _Adores_  Paris.

The Doctor had taken her to the old city no fewer than five times: once in each century starting from the eighteenth to the twenty-second. Each time it's notably and radically different, whether it's the shift from horses at one end to hover-cars at the other, or whether it's the steady but inexorable growth of ever-grander skyscrapers dominating the skyline. Yet in another, more important way, it's always the same, always having that unmistakeable air, that indescribable essence of  _Paris._

They stay in a backpackers' resort right in the middle of the city, since they can neither afford nor actually want to stay in something more luxurious – here, at ground level, they can soak in the city that much more intimately.

They do all the tourist things like the monuments and the Eiffel Tower, but for the most part it's about the streets, the cafés, the back-alley art galleries and the riverside walks.

And Amelia  _loves it._

"I can tell," Sophia replies over a coffee when she says exactly that.

Amelia glances up at her, an eyebrow raised. "Have I seriously become that obvious?"

"You're always obvious," Sophia replies with a smile and a laugh, and Amelia can't help but join her. Maybe obvious isn't so bad.

* * *

Surprisingly, it isn't actually the streets, cafés or avant-garde art galleries that Amelia will most remember from this little escape to Paris (and that's definitely what it is – an escape).

No, it's decidedly something bigger, more famous... more personal.

At first, Sophia had been a little perturbed by Amelia's insistence on the little afternoon sojourn on a stunningly pretty afternoon beneath the winter sun, one which probably would be better spent by the Seine rather than in cramped taxis-

"Oh, shut up and get your coat, will ya?"

Sophia does have a point, however, as the taxis  _are_ rather cramped, especially for Amelia's five-foot-eleven frame. In addition, the traffic is simply horrendous, and they seem to have picked out the most obnoxious taxi driver in all of France. All in all, it isn't the most pleasant journey and if not for Amelia's single-minded drive to get to their destination, she would've wondered why the hell she'd bothered.

Not that Sophia shows such restraint.

"The  _Musée d'Orsay_?" She turns to Amelia at the entrance, a bemused frown painted on her features. "Amelia, I know you're a van Gogh fan, but-"

"Just go with it, okay? Please."

Sophia eyes her closely. "This is important to you, isn't it?"

Amelia averts her eyes and presses her lips tightly together, heading on towards the van Gogh exhibition without so much as a word.

She doesn't speak again until they leave the building.

* * *

By the time they get back to the backpackers' hostel where they're staying, Amelia is knackered. They'd stopped by a lovely bistro on the way, one which served a lovely coq au vin, but she'd soon found it increasingly difficult to follow conversation, easily losing herself in thought or memory. The wine certainly didn't help, either.

So less than an hour later, and with the evening still quite young, they'd gone back to the hostel and Amelia had gone to lie down, trying to sleep... and failing.

Well, that's hardly new nor unexpected. She hasn't had a good night's sleep in... months, most likely. So she just lies there, reminiscing about the last few days, the last few _happy_  days in Paris.

Tomorrow morning, they'll catch the train back to London, and Amelia knows that all her problems, all her mistakes and all her failures will be there to greet her once she returns. But for now... for now she decides to forget about those, and just savour the week that had been. In particular, the day that had been.

She'd wanted to return to the Musée d'Orsay from the moment she'd come up with the idea for the trip to Paris, but she'd known that it wouldn't be easy to squeeze in. Sophia had been aware that that Amelia had already been there, and they had plenty of places to see with little time to see them.

But when Amelia wants something, she gets it - and she knows that it's all worth it when she sees that masterpiece again, that message whose meaning is known only to three people in all of time and space.

_For Amy._

The memory brings a smile to her face, and even though she isn't Amy, will never again be Amy, she can't help but drift back to that time. She can't help but close her eyes and return to those cobblestone streets beneath the clear Belgian sky, walking hand in hand with her best friend, smiling and laughing all the way to the home of Vincent van Gogh-

She wakes with a gasp, immediately sitting bolt upright with her eyes wide. The transition from the bright morning sun to near-total darkness throws her, and for a few seconds she struggles to gauge her surroundings. But she soon works out the truth.

_A dream._

It had been a dream. Just a dream, a stupid, pointless and silly dream. Not real. A long lost memory from a time that probably never was, and never will be again. Even though...

Well. Melody had promised, hadn't she? Amelia knows that those kinds of promises are usually kept – but that's the kicker.  _Usually._

Either way, it doesn't make any difference to the here and now. Hope is one thing, but the Doctor isn't here to help her, and hadn't been for over three years now. The only person who can save Amelia Pond is herself, and clinging onto faraway half-dreams won't change that.

She glances down at her watch.  _Half past two._ So she'd been asleep for... just under three hours. Not all that bad by recent standards, but she knows she won't be getting any more rest for a few hours at least.

She rubs her eyes, sighing. It had been a long and rather intense day, one that had affected her more than she had expected – and really, the same applied to the whole trip more generally. But what had she achieved?

Sure, getting out of London was great, and it had been unquestionably the best week of her  _single_ life, but nothing's  _actually_  changed, has it?

Her financial situation hasn't changed.

Her insomnia hasn't changed.

Her wild, reckless and self-destructive lifestyle hasn't really changed.

Above all, the crippling guilt, the despair, the  _loneliness_  that sometimes threatens to break her outright, drains her of everything good and hopeful, that tempts her to give in and simply  _stop_ \- that's not gone.

Sophia and Laura had gotten into her shell, sure, but only because she'd let them in - and while it's indescribably wonderful that they now  _know_ , that she doesn't have to do this completely alone,  _know_  is not the same thing as  _understand_. They're friends, wonderful friends, but they aren't her daughter. Or Rory. Or the Doctor.

She sighs and closes her eyes, resting her head back on the wall. This is exactly why she needs more sleep, although it's also why she isn't getting any. To sleep she needs to dream, and to dream she needs to hope. She's running rather short on hope.

But hadn't she gone back to the Musée d'Orsay for a reason? Hadn't she stood in front of that painting, the one dedicated to  _her_ , for half an hour, lost in thought? Why had she done that?

She, Amelia Jessica Pond, impossible and magnificent, had given hope to  _the greatest painter who had ever lived_  and now she can't spare any for herself?

What's the point of it all, then? What had she spent her entire life fighting for?

Really, it's not just that she has to ask herself these questions. It's that she can't answer them, the solutions to her puzzle just eluding in her grasp, hidden in the mists as she stumbles blindly in the dark. She knows that if she  _doesn't_ , however, she'll reach a rather abrupt conclusion, and she'll just become...

...a story in someone's head.

She opens her eyes again. The words echo in her head, like a mantra, a relic of a half-forgotten memory so vague that for a moment she wonders whether she's dreaming-

_But that's okay. We're all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?_

She pulls off the blanket and gets off the bed so quickly that she almost wakes Sophia, sleeping soundly just a few feet away.

 _Oops._  Pausing nervously for a second until her friend's breathing evens out again, she tip-toes her way over to the tiny desk squeezed into the corner, where Sophia had left her laptop overnight.

At first, the screen almost blinds her when the laptop powers up, but she quickly manages to work her way to a word processor and open a new, completely blank document. The cursor blinks at her, as if toying with her, daring her to take the plunge.

Well, she's never been one to resist a good dare. She takes a deep breath and types her first words.

_We're all stories in the end._

And this is hers.

* * *

"So what are you doing on that?"

Amelia stops typing looks up from the laptop, glancing at Sophia in the opposite seat. She'd borrowed it shortly after their train had pulled out from Paris, right after ordering her fourth coffee of the morning – that damned insomnia again.

"Oh – um, just stuff."

"Stuff?" The way Sophia raises her eyebrows makes it clear that Amelia's evasion hasn't gone unnoticed. "Come on, what are you writing?"

"How'd you know I was writing?" Amy asks brusquely, taken aback slightly by Sophia's shrewd question.

"You've been typing non-stop for half an hour."

_Oh._

"Right," Amelia mutters, her cheeks flushing slightly. "It's nothing, anyway. Just getting my thoughts down, ya know?"

"Mind if I have a look?" Sophia's voice is light and friendly, but there's something in her expression which clearly indicates that she knows that there's more to this.

Despite her best attempts over the last few weeks, Amelia still finds this whole  _openness_  thing a difficult fit for her, and her instincts immediately scream at her to deflect, evade somehow.

"Um..."

"Oh, come on, Amelia." Sophia huffs audibly, before reaching over and grabbing the laptop right out of Amelia's hands.

"Soph,  _oi-_ "

"It's my laptop, anyway," Sophia cuts her off with a smirk. "I'm just having a look."

Sophia's right, it is technically  _her_  property and it's her right to do revoke Amelia's access to it whenever she so pleases, but the ginger can't help but fold her arms across herself with a petulant pout.

She's expecting some off-hand comment, some half-compliment that she'll be able to see through straight away. What she doesn't expect is silence, one that drags on... and on... and on.

"It's stupid," she blabbers quickly, trying to cover herself. "It's just something I tried writing last night about – you know. About the trip, and about the museum."

Still nothing.

"Sophia?" Amelia asks quietly, but Sophia is clearly transfixed by what's on the laptop, her mouth hanging open slightly in undisguised shock. Amelia clears her throat, trying to get her attention.

It works. Sophia's light hazel eyes snap up to hers, and the tear-glaze covering them tells Amelia everything she needs to know.

* * *

One thing she adores about Sophia and Laura: they're decisive.

Which is fair enough, because Amelia is too – or used to be, anyway. Either way, when Laura calls a fortnight after she returns to London, she immediately knows that something is up _._  She's in the middle of changing a light bulb, though – well, to be precise, she's swapping a light bulb from the spare bedroom to the kitchen, to save money on a new one – so she's not about to drop everything and go without a reason.

Laura doesn't seem to care, because apparently Amelia has to get her arse over to their place  _right now._

"That important, huh?" Her eyebrows are raised, and the tiny sigh on the other end of the line tells her that she must have betrayed more than a hint of skepticism.

"Come on, Amelia. Please?" Laura's voice is almost pleading – that has to be a sign, surely? Laura is like her most of the time, and she doesn't plead unless she's desperate.

She bites her lip, juggling the competing voices in her head. She  _wants_  to, but-

"Look, don't worry about the taxi, I'll pay the fare," Laura cuts across her thoughts as if reading them. "Just get over here."

She somehow manages to not roll her eyes as she hangs up, but there's already a half-smile on her face when she knocks on their front door half an hour later.

The door opens to reveal a familiar brunette in the doorway. "Hey."

Amelia steps inside, shrugging off her coat and shaking her hair out of her beanie. "Hi, Soph. So what's this big deal you have going on here?"

Sophia raises an eyebrow at her, but a playful one. "Big deal?"

"Like you'd let Laura burn forty quid on taxis if it weren't."

She has a point with that and they both know it – working at a bank as she does, Sophia has a reputation for prudence with money, quite unlike herself. It's just another marker which tells Amelia that something is afoot.

Either way, Sophia just chuckles lightly and beckons her inside, where Laura is apparently busy at work on the laptop. She glances up as Amelia walks in, motioning towards a cup of coffee at the edge of the table, positioned just too far away to be easily reached whilst sitting... right.

Amelia takes the offered coffee and yanks up a chair behind her, fixing Laura with a piercing, level gaze. However, rather than baulking and giving up the game, the woman simply clicks a few buttons on her laptop and spins it round so it's facing the ginger.

Amelia puts down the coffee, frowning slightly.

"What's this?"

"Your blog."

A raised eyebrow. "Since when?"

"Since last week."

She gives Laura another querying glance before returning her gaze to the screen. The blog's layout is elegant yet eye-catching, dominated by shades of a deep, vibrant blue which just so happens to be her favourite colour... TARDIS blue. Yeah, this is definitely 'her' blog.

There's only one post, a long expanse of text which stretches down and out of sight. As she starts to read, however, she soon realises that the colour isn't the  _only_  familiar aspect of this particular blog.

_We're all stories in the end, and this is mine. Or, at least, this is the end of mine. I don't know how much longer I'll be here, living, breathing, part of this beautiful world we all call home, but I know that whatever follows can't possibly compare to what I had before. I'm not losing hope, I'll never lose hope, but I won't ever forget just how special it was to just exist, just to live and savour the beauty of this world we have the privilege of witnessing. As I sit here, knowing that I don't have much longer – none of us do, really – I know that in writing these words, in my story, I've found a little piece of forever._

She looks up at her two friends, her eyes wide and her face pale. She'd all but forgotten about this, swept up as it had been in the cacophony of life. After all, she'd written almost all of it on Sophia's laptop whilst lying in bed in Paris, so it wasn't something she could exactly take home to reflect on.

"This – this is-"

"Yeah." Laura reaches over and clasps Amelia's hand gently, tenderly. "Soph showed it to me the moment she got home, and I knew I couldn't just let it sit here. We had to get it out somehow."

"So you started a blog for me?" Not once, not in her wildest dreams, would Amelia have ever contemplated broadcasting her story, exposing her  _soul_  to the world like this. But here, now... maybe it's not such a bad idea.

Maybe she's found a little piece of forever after all.

But they aren't finished.

"We told everyone we could find, you know," Sophia says, standing behind her. "At work or on Facebook or whatever – we got the word out. And, well..."

She moves forward so she can see the screen, pointing at a nondescript button at the top right corner. One whose label Amelia can't quite believe.

"Donations?  _What-?"_

But Laura shushes her and clicks the button, opening a brand new screen. It too is dominated by those blue tones Amelia so adores, but her eyes are drawn instantly to a single numeric counter in the centre of the screen... and she can't look away.

She doesn't speak.

She doesn't move.

She just stares, frozen with shock, riven with a feeling she can't quite place, breathless as her pulse races.

"At first we couldn't believe what we were seeing," Sophia murmurs, breaking the silence, "but then another fifty pounds came in, and another, and I know it's not  _that_ much, but-"

"It's enough." At last, Amelia manages to break her gaze from the counter which reads more than five hundred –  _five hundred –_ and looks at her friends. "It's more than enough."

"Do you think? I mean, it's amazing, but I don't know if it's enough to pay off your debts-"

"It will be," Amelia cuts her off, her voice suddenly infused with a steel, a fire that hadn't been there since September. "It has to be."

"Just because you say that doesn't mean-"

"It's enough for me to survive, alright?" Her eyes are blazing, her voice is clear, and somehow she knows that whatever her past may dictate, whatever complications may arise, this moment is hers to seize – and by god will she seize it.

"Because that's what I do, Sophia.  _I survive._ "

* * *

And she does.

Remarkably, almost miraculously, she does. But then again, Amelia Pond has always been a survivor, and she always finds a way, doesn't she?

She found a way when she was just a little girl with no parents. She found a way when she spent her entire childhood waiting for her imaginary friend. She found a way when she thought that said imaginary friend had been murdered, she found a way when she was kidnapped and she found a way when her child was stolen from her.

She  _always_  finds a way.

It's not easy, though no one said it would be, and it's certainly not much fun. Nevertheless, with little but sheer bloody-mindedness on her side, she claws her way out of the abyss and returns to the world. The donations continue to trickle in, just enough to let her get by, and her previously untapped writing talent nets her what she's been searching for since October: a job.

It's not fancy or prestigious, just a weekly back-of-the-magazine travel column for a cheap weekly, bit together with the blog, it's enough to begin paying off her debts.

It's not much, but it's a start. She might be on the bottom of the ladder, but at least she's there and climbing. Slowly, as the seasons pass and the months rush by, she regains all those things that were once so integral to who she used to be – confidence, ambition, drive – and starts to become Amelia Pond again.

True, it's not all smooth sailing. Neither the crushing loneliness nor the throttling guilt have gone away, they're just buried deeper inside her. Sometimes they decide to resurface and... well.

She's never been more thankful for her friends.

In addition, she still spends countless hours camped next to her answer-phone, awaiting a call whilst cursing her own stupidity, and it's not like her new take on life is all roses and sunshine either. Sometimes she gets screwed over, or she makes a mistake, or sometimes she's just plain unlucky – and boy, does she feel the consequences.

Whether it's loneliness, whether it's stress or some other stupid thing, on one or two occasions she's dragged right to the edge of the abyss again and she wonders what it would be like to jump.

But she always pulls herself back. She cries, she screams, she hurts herself and hates herself, but she always,  _always_  finds a way to force herself out of today and into tomorrow.

And slowly, ever so slowly, Amelia Pond learns how to smile again.

* * *

In time, her life becomes as hectic and frantic as it used to be at the start of last year, and it's just the way she likes it. The world moves at a blinding pace around her and she moves with it, one step ahead and to the side. She's in her element again, in control of her life as she always wished she could be.

She's so busy that she simply doesn't have time to stop, take a breath and consider just how far her life has come since the dark winter of last year. So instead fate, so often her enemy, decides to show her.

It starts off normally and harmlessly enough. She's out at the shops, buying... well, everything. Groceries for herself, obviously. Winter clothing for her assignment to Iceland – it may be summer, but she suspects that doesn't mean much on a glacier. She also has to buy everything she needs for Sophia and Laura's wedding... which is next week, and which she is supposedly running.

 _And_  she has to get home and start her article-slash-application on Hawaii to send off to the Times in the unlikely event that she might be able to land a gig there.  _And_  she has to do housekeeping on the blog.  _And_  she has a party this evening which is simply  _not_  going to miss.

So, all in all, she doesn't really have time to give her once-favourite coffee shop more than a cursory glance as she marches by with her loaded shopping trolley – but a cursory glance is all it takes.

From this angle, and with so many people around, there's no chance that Rory might see her and recognise her. But she certainly sees  _him._

He looks the same as ever, really. The way he's done his hair, the way he leans forward slightly in his chair, the little twitches and mannerisms, they're all exactly as she remembers. He's even wearing that same ridiculous sweater he always loved. It's all so very familiar – except, of course, for one thing.

She's pretty, Amelia will give her that. The woman looks about her own age, with wavy, shoulder-length reddish-brown hair, large and  _ridiculously_  blue eyes. There's a smile on the woman's lips and though she certainly  _can_  see Amelia if she looks up, she's too engrossed in conversation to do that. As if...

_Oh._

The realisation clicks in her mind and knocks the breath out of the body. She freezes, rooted to the spot and staring at her ex-husband merrily gossiping away to the lady. Something raw, hot and nameless rises from some dark place within Amelia that she thought she'd shut away, and her hands are beginning to shake already-

-but she catches herself. Stops. Takes a breath.

She moves one tentative step forward, close enough that she can hear their voices but not so close that she can be seen.

She can hear them chatting about work and life and all those other things she and Rory used to spend their days talking about. She can even hear him drawing out a peal of girlish laughter by telling the same stupid nurse jokes he used to tell her, the one that always used to make Amelia laugh.

And which, to her surprise, it still does.

"Miss?"

She gasps and spins around, instinctively drawing away from the cleaner who had interrupted her little eavesdrop and backs into her own shopping trolley – but his voice is gentle and his eyes kind.

"Yeah – um. Hi." She gives him a sheepish but warm smile as she relaxes again, hoping that it'll be enough to draw attention away from her somewhat suspicious behaviour, but evidently the cleaner isn't thinking along those lines.

"You okay, miss? You're crying."

She gives a little surprised gasp again, but when she goes to touch her cheeks she finds them wet with tears. But that's odd, because doesn't recall feeling sad a few seconds ago and she certainly isn't sad now.

Indeed, what she's feeling now is totally different to sad, distant yet familiar, like a long-lost friend returning after countless days in the wilderness. Of summer and peace, of smiling and love, a feeling of-

"You alright?" The cleaner's repeated question drags her out of the moment. She looks up at him, eyes still shining and a smile on her lips.

Not a false, denial-filled smile which goes skin-deep and lasts for the merest instant, nor the sad, mellow smile which never quite reaches her eyes, but a  _smile._ Pure. Warm. Uncomplicated.

_Happy._

"I will be," she answers, and resumes pushing the trolley down the street.

She doesn't give the coffee shop a second glance.

 


	7. Anger: I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After all, whatever ills had befallen her over the last few years are probably the direct result of a bet he had made with the universe: that the Ponds’ marriage would prove to be unbreakable. He’d gambled, but she had been the one who’d lost. On the other hand, he’s probably overreacting. She’d just told him that she's fine, that nothing is wrong with her, and who is he to second-guess her? She’s never let him run her life before; he very much doubts that she’s going to let him start now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay. Without wanting to spoil, it’s now imperative for me to say that there are strongly trigger warnings for this next big part of the story (not this chapter in particular, but the next few). In particular: self-harm and depression.

****

* * *

  **ACT TWO: Anger**  


* * *

**Christmas Day, 2018.**

Amelia has never understood time. Not really, anyway.

Oh sure, she has a vague grasp of how it affects her, mostly from personal experience with fractured timelines and interwoven pasts that she still can't quite untangle. But she doesn't understand how it _works_ , its ebbs and flows, how it shapes and plays with her life and, most of all, how it always leads her to a moment like this.

A moment like here and now, with _him_ , after four and half years of loneliness, after _seven_ years of _waiting_ for him – again. As she always does.

“How long?” the Doctor asks her, and she can hear a note of desperation in her voice – but it only hardens her resolve. Where was that concern when she actually needed it, years before?

“About four and a half years.”

She can see the Doctor's face fall, his eyes widen as he realises just how much her life has changed, but she doesn't react. One of the things she's learnt – one of many things, so many – is that however fast you run, however thoroughly you try to evade time's grasp it always, _always_ catches up to you, doesn't it?

No, she doesn't react. She can't. This is her life now, and if time has taught her anything, it's that she can't run from her past. She can't hide from her loneliness. It's who she is, and who she'll always be.

Before long, the night grows increasingly cold and silent, the gaps in their conversation stretching outwards before them, the emptiness between their words filled only by the sound of refilled wine glasses and the teasing crackle of the fire.

They sit on opposite sides of her table, facing each other without always making eye contact. He tries to tell her tall tales about the days and adventures he’s had since they last saw each other, and she loves each and every one of them. She laughs at the right times, smiles when she’s supposed to, drops little balls of wit in exactly the gaps he happens to leave in his stories – but she’s always aware that they’re _his_ adventures, not theirs, and she certainly doesn’t share any of her own.

He’s trying to make her, though. Oh, she knows that he’s trying. She’s spent too long around him, she knows the games he plays and the devious little tricks he likes to spring beneath that silly face and goofy demeanour of his. Once upon the time they would have worked, and he’d have opened her up like a book, her deepest secrets and hidden fears written in clear black-and-white for him to peruse at his leisure.

But she’s older and wiser now, and she manages to evade them right up until that moment where stops talking and starts asking. He asks about what _she’s_ been doing, about the seven years she’d spent in her supposedly happy and normal life, and…

Well, it's not like talking is her strong point.

It wasn't like this once, Amelia knows. Back when he was her magical, raggedy Doctor, and she was his mad, impossible Amy, barely a moment's silence had passed between them, only stopping to catch their breath. They played off each other, locked in what she'd foolishly hoped was an endless dance across time and space. The ginger and the alien.

Now, though, that feels a lifetime away.

She sighs. At a bare minimum, it's definitely uncomfortable, and this isn’t supposed to be uncomfortable. She’s supposed to have missed him – and that means catching up, not sitting there and scratching an itch on her wrist.

"So anyway," she begins, after they’d spent a long minute in total silence, "how long has it been for you, anyway? I mean, it's been seven for me, but I'm guessing it's been closer to seventy for you. Or seven hundred."

"Oi! I'm not _that_ old," he says, pouting a little as he did so, his back straightening a little in mock indignation. "I'm twelve hundred and six, thank you very much. I've matured."

She giggles a little at that. Well, she has missed him after all.

"If you say so," she says, a thoughtful half-smile having made its way to her face. "So that means-"

"A hundred years? More or less, since-"

"The lake." She averts her eyes, as the memory finds its way inexorably to her mind's eye. Even now, she can still see the golden mist rising, she could still hear the crack of the gunshot, she could still feel the coarseness of the tweed against her cheek as she listened in vain for his heartbeats between her own wracking sobs-

But she doesn’t let herself drift down that path again. Can’t. That’s what she’s been told, right? _You can’t keep reliving the past,_ they’d said, without any real understanding of what the word _past_ means to her. Regardless, they know best, so she pushes it out of her mind.

“Right. Yeah. So, a hundred years?” She takes another sip of wine, her fourth glass of the evening. “Picked up any more hot stuff on the way?”

He seems perturbed by that, oddly enough. Surely he knows what she means? “Pond-”

“Oh, come on,” she says before he gets any further, adding a derisive snort for effect. “You can’t have been stuck in that box of yours all by yourself, right? Come on, spill the beans. Was she hot?”

His faces twitches and his lips thin as he shifts a little in his chair. “Amelia, there hasn’t been-”

“How many were there?” She presses on, ignoring his interjections completely. “Were they blondes? I bet most of them were, you love them-”

“ _Amy._ ”

She stops talking at once.

“I haven’t – I mean, I haven’t like that,” he says, his eyes not quite meeting hers. “Not like you – not since you and Rory.”

She swallows. “No one?”

“No one.”

She takes a moment to consider that, the idea of the mad, flighty alien traversing time and space on his own in that machine which is far, far too big on the inside. Maybe he was waiting – but for what? Certainly not her. The last seven years are proof enough of that, and she knows a thing or two about waiting. And since when were his friends irreplaceable?

Maybe he wants her to feel sorry for him. Maybe she _should_ feel sorry for him, that he’s spent tens if not hundreds of years all alone compared to her mere four and a half, but like hell she’s about to do that. The idiot has a time machine, he could have come back to her any time he wanted.

She doesn’t have such luxuries.

“Oh. Well, never mind that now,” she continues casually, taking another sip of wine. Whatever she may think and whatever he might have done, he’s still her best friend. She still misses him. “So what about today, then? How’d you end up here?”

“Not quite sure, to be honest,” he says with a shrug, relaxing again after the little awkward moment before. “Though yesterday I rode a sled down the palace of the Ice Queen, created three new colours, rode a horse across Coventry – oh, and think I invented pasta last week.” He lists them one after the other, ticking them off his fingers as if he’d prepared them in advance.

He probably had, now that she thinks about it. She can’t help but smile, though – this is exactly what she misses. Although…

“Pasta? Really?”

He shrugs. “Apparently. Didn’t mean to.”

“Like the way we ‘didn’t mean to end up on that mud planet’, yeah?”

“Hey, that was fun-” he begins to say, but she just snorts before he can finish the sentence.

“Ruined my best skirt, you did,” she grumbles, but there’s still a smile playing on her lips as the memory of that day, manic, mad and mud-stained, comes back to her.

“I got you a new one!” he exclaims, his jaw set out in a wonderfully offended manner. “Besides, you weren’t complaining when you were made queen…”

He drifts into a half-ramble, reminiscing of days long gone, of memories she knows they both cherish beyond anything else, and…

 

Well, she’s missed him.

* * *

Two hours after arriving, the Doctor is flicking through a stack of postcards and clippings from newspapers and magazines as she makes them both tea.

“So, journalist, huh?”

Even from here, he can tell that she’s smiling. “It was an accident, really. I had this blog about some of my adventures and – well, they came to me.”

He frowns a little. “A blog?”

“Yeah, a blog. And don’t laugh – it was my only source of income for a while.”

“I wasn’t laughing,” he points out.

“Yeah, but you were thinking it.” She looks back at him, her brow set in a level stare and the smile gone. “If you must know, I lost my job and had to make some money. Living isn’t free, in case you’d forgotten.”

“Of course it isn’t,” he says quietly, flicking through more of the postcards. They’re dotted from all over Earth – America, Russia, Iceland, India… he’d been to most of them, but not all. It’s a pleasant reminder of just how rich and glorious just _one_ planet can be, let alone a whole universe full of them. “So the kissogram job…”

“Fell through,” she answers, resuming her place next to him with two mugs of tea. “I’m not fussed, I don’t exactly miss it.”

“But you-”

“But nothing, Doctor. A lot’s changed since we last met.”

For a brief second he just gazes at her, and even from here he can tell that there’s something _off_ about her. She still _looks_ magnificent, of course – how could she not? – but even from here he can tell that something is wrong, something is deeply, fundamentally amiss with Amelia Pond. Her face is so pale, her eyes slightly bloodshot, and she’s been fiddling with her hands and arms all evening.

Even now, as she’s sitting there, she’s absent-mindedly rubbing and scratching at her forearm through her sweater, as if constantly bothered by some itch just below the skin. He’s almost tempted to say something – but she catches him watching, gives him a brief, sharp glare and stops. It’s almost as if she isn’t aware of her behaviour until he _makes_ her aware of it.

He tries to suppress a sigh, and fails completely. “Amy-”

“Could you please not call me that?” Her voice is light and cool, but clipped, and he can hear an ever-so-slight roughness around the edges. “I told you, I changed my name.”

He’s well aware of that, and it’s been bothering him all night. “ _Why_ , though? I was just starting to like ‘Amy’,” he quips, hoping to draw a laugh out of her – which it does, albeit a little forced and – _cold?_

His Amy had been many, many things, but cold? No. Not his Amy. Never his Amy. Then again, she’s not his Amy any more – she’s not Amy full stop.

“I told you, it felt better.”

“Beyond that.”

“I had my reasons. Look,” Amelia says, putting her mug down and swivelling a little in her chair to face him head on. “When Rory left, my life sort of sucked for a fair while after that, okay? I had to change a lot of things about myself to get back on track. They didn’t always work, but I don’t regret making those choices, ya know? ‘Cos I’d be regretting being alive if I did.”

He brushes some hair away from her face to reveal a brilliant light in her eyes, blazing and defiant. “Life isn’t just about surviving, Amelia.”

“Of course it is. You _taught_ me that it is.”

He flinches, the words echoing what Amy – _another_ Amy, abandoned, embittered and filled with enough justified rage to fuel a star – said to him so many years ago. “Amelia, I’m sorry-”

“ _Sorry?_ For what?” She laughs again, and this time her laugh is so unashamedly bitter that he almost would have preferred it if she’d hit him. Once, sound of her laughter was enough to brighten the Doctor’s entire world. A long time ago, he lived for that sound, for his Amelia’s laughter.

But she’s not _his_ Amelia anymore and her laughs – well, they’re not the same.

He’s heard these laughs before, of course. These laughs are restrained, choked-back, tinged with that deep, acute sadness that had infected Amy just before they’d parted ways. Indeed, it had been a major part of _why_ he’d dropped her off, as through her half-laughs and sad smiles which didn’t reach her eyes, he’d heard her lonely and increasingly desperate plea.

_Help me. Save me._

And he’d tried. He’d tried to give her what she deserved – not _all_ of what she deserved, for he could never do that, but as much as he reasonably could. A normal life with Rory, a _happy_ life, free from suffering and loneliness and all those other things that she knew far, far too well _because of him_ – that was what she deserved. That was what he’d tried to give her.

But Rory’s evidently gone, and her laughs, her smiles – if anything, they’re worse. They’re more forced, more jagged, bitter and infinitely colder.

There’s something _not right_ about her and he wants to fix it, _needs to –_ but can’t. It’s not his place any more.

She must sense his discomfort, though, because her expression immediately softens, and she gently grasps his arm, squeezing it through the tweed jacket.

“Hey. I’m not…” She hesitates, as if retracting her words just as they reach the tip of her tongue. “It’s not something you can just run in and press a few buttons and everything will be roses and sunshine. It’s not like an alien invasion or something where you can just go in and _fix it_. It’s life, and it’s _mine,_ and I can’t run away from it now _._ ”

He searches her face keenly, with aged eyes that have lost none of their exceptional sharpness – but this time, he finds nothing. He can’t see beyond her face, he can’t see over the wall she’s built or through the defences she’s constructed around her. All he can see is – is _Amelia_ , independent, free and without any trace of regret.

“So… so you’ll be okay? I mean, you’ll be fine by yourself, here?” Part of him wants her to say no, to run away with him once more – but the rest of him is sickened at having such a thought.

Her reply is so quick, so decisive that it banishes any argument from his mind. “Of course I’ll be fine, moron, I’m always fine. I do have actual friends, Doctor. They help me out from time to time.”

He has no idea if she meant it, but the words unexpectedly sting – after all, every time one of her _other_ friends had to help her out of a tight spot was a time where _he_ wasn’t there, the likely cause of her problems. After all, whatever ills had befallen her over the last few years are probably the direct result of a bet _he_ had made with the universe: that the Ponds’ marriage would prove to be unbreakable. He’d gambled, but _she_ had been the one who’d lost.

On the other hand, he’s probably overreacting. She’d just _told him_ that she's fine, that nothing is wrong with her, and who is he to second-guess her? She’s never let him run her life before; he very much doubts that she’s going to let him start now.

She’s right, after all – the bad things are as much a part of life as the good, and it’s not his place to try and erase them.

He smiles at her, a gentle smile coloured by understanding and compassion, and decides to change the subject. “So tell me about this newspaper thing. And be detailed, because I don’t know a thing about newspapers.”

She laughs at that – and this time her laugh is genuine, if disbelieving and slightly derisive. “Seriously? I’ve seen you reading the paper.”

He shrugs. “They’re entertaining and occasionally useful, but why would I read about something in a newspaper when I could go see it?”

She snorts. “I guess so. Well, I’d been trying to get that job for over a year, you know. I’d been freelancing for magazines before ages, and the pay wasn’t exactly brilliant…”

 

He sits back as she talks, smiling gently as he loses himself in words – just as she had done so often, once upon a time.

* * *

“I won’t be a stranger this time, I promise.”

“Promise?”

“Cross my hearts,” he replies – and he does actually draw crosses over both his hearts with a thumb. She giggles a little into her palm upon seeing it.

They’d stayed up talking long into the night, catching up and sharing stories – happy ones, mostly. The warmth and the wine had seen to that. There had been only so many stories they could share, though, before it started to get repetitive, and before long they began to stray on territory which mutual assent had declared as out of bounds.

Eventually, after yet another increasingly awkward silence, they had both decided that it was time. So a few minutes after that, here they are in the entrance hall, saying their goodbyes.

“So I’ll definitely see you around?”

“Definitely, and I mean it, Pond,” he says, smiling at her. He smiles fondly, lovingly, trying to banish any trace of regret and pity that might contaminate his expression. This time she returns the smile in full, together with an embrace so tight that for a brief, magic moment he simply _forgets,_ and loses himself in her, nuzzling her hair and taking in its fragrance.

Eventually, after a minute – or maybe an hour, or even a day – they break apart, still smiling at each other. He’s tempted to kiss her on the forehead, but he knows that it’s not right, that it would belong to another time. A time that’s gone. Instead he goes to hold her hands, and say his last farewell – and in the process, his fingers brush over the inside of her left wrist.

Suddenly, without warning, she _jerks._

Her arms fly back so quickly that he barely registers it before they’re drawn tight into her, her eyes wild with a nameless fear. His hands are still exactly where they were, and for a moment they stay like that – frozen, staring at each other in shock and disbelief.

And then he stumbles back – spluttering apologies, trying to correct his mistake, trying to find a way to _fix her-_

“No, no, it’s okay,” she says quickly, relaxing and shaking the tension out of her arms. “Don’t worry about it.”

He’s not convinced. “Amelia, if there’s something wrong, you can-”

“Doctor, seriously.” She laughs, a little shakily, but a laugh all the same. “I’m fine.”

“Pond, please-”

“ _Fine_ , Doctor,” she repeats firmly. “Seriously.”

He looks at her briefly, with more than a hint of desperation – but she’s closed herself off, her expression composed and unreadable, and her posture hard and uncompromising. He sighs.

“If you’re sure-”

“ _I’m sure._ ”

“Okay. Then – well, then I guess I’ll see you around, Pond.” He smiles as gamely as he can despite the storm raging within, giving her a little salute as he opens the door to the midnight air. He takes a breath and steps out, away from the warmth, away from _her_ , and back into the cold of solitude.

She gives him one last smile, says a little “Goodbye, raggedy man”, and shuts the door. She doesn’t slam it, she doesn’t do it with undue force – but even so, there’s a firmness, a finality to the sound of wood hitting wood, of the latch closing and the lock turning that sinks deep to his core, cuts right to the bone.

He rests his forehead against the wood, his eyes squeezed shut and his breaths unsteady. For a moment, he just stays like that, his mind filled with the image of her jerking her hands away from him, and the shock, the _terror_ that had briefly filled him – but he stops himself.

He shakes his head and opens his eyes, turning away from the TARDIS-blue door, the little house – turns away from _her_.

Whatever he might think – whatever might have happened, she’s not his anymore. Really, she never was, and to be frank he causes more damage than he solves. It’s best for the both of them that she gets on with her own life, and it’s time he moved on.

He knows all about moving on.

The TARDIS is on the other side of the street, sitting inconspicuously on the sidewalk. He takes a moment to rest his fingers against the still-warm wood when he reaches it, smiling at the age-old machine. At least there’ll be one companion that he won’t ever leave behind. He’s already planning his next journey as he pushes on the door, mulling over the green fields of Arcadia or the Live Chess Olympiad in the 40th century – except the door doesn’t move.

He frowns. Pushes again.

The door stays firmly shut.

“Oh, come on, old girl,” he mutters. He even clicks his fingers, but to no avail.

He steps back for a moment, utterly perturbed at why his time machine has suddenly decided to lock him out. He tries the key – but _that_ doesn’t work either.

He’s stumped. This is – well, he won’t say this is a first, but it’s certainly seriously unusual. Why the devil has his TARDIS – _his TARDIS –_ locked him out like so? What’s he done wrong?

He tries shoving the door one more time, even leaning on it bodily, but he might as well head-butt it for all the good it does – and that isn’t exactly a good idea either, as he finds out to his painful cost a moment later.

It’s bizarre. Truly bizarre. Even when his TARDIS is truly, properly peeved at him, she never _locks him out_ like this. Not unless something seriously wrong has happened, or she has a damn good reason to keep him from going, like…

Like…

_Oh._

 He’s rarely run so fast before – even though the house is a mere thirty feet away.

* * *

For the longest moment, Amelia simply stands there in the entrance hall, shivering.

Not because she’s cold – the heating’s turned right up, she’s wearing her warmest woollen sweater _and_ she’s Scottish. No, she’s shivering because of something rather more important than a little chill.

She hadn’t expected him to do that – she hadn’t expected to _react_ like that. She’s has reacted like that in _months_. She rubs her wrists and forearms, her hands shaking a little – they’re not sensitive to the touch, not anymore, so why had she reacted like that?

Alright, so she’d been scratching a little more than usual at her forearms, but that had been because she was itchy. That was all. Nothing sinister about it, and she certainly hadn’t appreciated the close attention he had given her behaviour all night, _thank-you-very-much._

Anyway. It’s gone, he’s gone, and she is _moving on_ with her life. That was what tonight had been about, right? Moving on. Putting aside the last seven years, the last _four_ , and pressing on with the life she’d managed to rebuild over time.

In a twisted way, she’s almost _thankful_ he’s gone. Not because she hates him, or because she doesn’t cherish the memories she has of him, with him – she does, and will do so forever – but because it’s proof, it’s the ultimate validation that she’s _won_ her battle with the last four and a half years.

It hadn’t been easy. On multiple occasions, she’d believed that she’d killed her demons at last and had fought her way to the sunlight. On multiple occasions, she’d been proven wrong – and each time had been worse and worse, as her fears that she would _never_ escape her own piece of hell had multiplied and multiplied. But she had, of course.

Every single time, she’d escaped. And she’d done so alone. No Rory. No Doctor. Just her, and her close circle of _human_ friends and family.

Besides, he’s the Doctor. He’ll come back to her one day, he couldn’t keep himself away from her even if he wanted to.

He always comes back.

She turns to go upstairs, take her pills and maybe try to get some sleep – but she’s stopped halfway up by a loud _thud_ and sharp, unmistakable tapping noise on the door behind her.

She freezes, the breath momentarily knocked out of her. For a moment, she’s tempted to just ignore it and pretend she isn’t there, but there’s another triple-knock a moment later.

“Pond? Are you there?” the Doctor says, his voice muffled through the wood. She closes her eyes, and begins counting to ten. Or a hundred. However long it takes.

“ _A-me-li-a_ ,” he croons, emphasising every syllable in a ridiculous, sing-song way – so much so that she has to physically stop herself from bursting into laughter. “Could you open up? I want to ask you something.”

She sighs. Well, it can’t hurt, can it? It’s just a question, and she can always refuse to answer if she doesn’t like it. She retreats back down the stairs to the door, straightens herself up with her chin raised and her back upright, before turning the handle.

He doesn’t even wait for the door to swing open before asking, “Can I stay with you?”

 _Oh_. That isn’t what she had expected.

“Um – what?”

“Can I stay here, with you? Just for a bit.” The words spill out of his mouth in a rush, his eyes are darting around, looking anywhere but her face, and he’s fiddling endlessly with his hands. He looks for all the world like a nervous teenager asking his childhood crush out for a first date. “Please?”

She blinks once, twice, struggling to formulate a coherent response. Well, whatever might happen, he’s certainly managed to catch her off-balance. “But – why?”

“TARDIS has locked me out,” he replies, staring at somewhere between her stomach and his own feet. “I’ve tried to get in, but nothing doing. She doesn’t want me to leave.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You’re locked out of the TARDIS?”

He glances up at her. “Something like that.”

“Have you tried the key?” she asks with a wry smile. _Wouldn’t be the first time._

“ _Amelia._ Of course I have.”

“Sure?”

“Sure.”

She bites her lip, her usual decisiveness having totally abandoned her. Part of her wants to hug him and show him the spare bedroom, part of her wants to slam the door in his face, and the rest of her has no clue at all.

“Why d’you want to stay here, anyway?” she asks, deliberately equivocating while the warring parts of her mind attempt to sort out their differences. “I mean – why stay with me?”

“Why not?”

For a moment, she’s taken aback – the simplicity, the _honesty_ of the question strips away her ability to respond. But she quickly collects herself, and gets back onto the front foot. “ _Doctor_ -”

“I miss you,” he says, cutting across her with a shrug. “Is that enough?”

She opens her mouth – but no words come out. He’s looking right at her now, his expression soft and open and… maybe he’s right. Maybe that _is_ enough. She looks him in the eye, searching for any hint of a lie or a misconception, but there’s nothing there but honesty.

_For once._

“And you won’t get bored?” she asks. It’s a valid question – she’s seen him whining like a little boy after five minutes of no activity. How will he do in the real world for even a few days without some alien invasion to distract him?

“No, no,” he replies hurriedly. “I’ll find something to do – I mean, it’s London. I’ll get a job. Maybe two. I’ll learn to fly or something – I’ll be fine.”

She’s less than convinced. “Really?”

“Really.” Well, he certainly _sounds_ like he means it, and she guesses that she should take him at his word.

She purses her lips. “No showers longer than five minutes,” she says at last.

“Won’t take longer than four,” he says in reply.

“You’re cleaning the bathroom and all the downstairs rooms.”

“Naturally.”

“And doing the laundry.”

“Of course.”

“ _And_ the dishes.”

“They’ll be the cleanest dishes you’ve ever seen.”

She tries to suppress a smile – and fails miserably. Evidently he takes this as a sign, because his face immediately brightens and a broad, goofy grin finds its way to his lips. “So, can I stay? I promise I’ll be good.”

She looks at him, takes in his expression, all eager and ready to please, and she laughs, truly and from the heart.

“Fine,” she says once the laugh dies down, relenting at last. “But only for a bit.”

He hugs her so hard that she almost falls over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Some of you might be are wondering about the whole anger thing. It’s coming (though this story only loosely follows that structure, remember). Also to emphasise that the four year gap is decidedly non-trivial; important things have happened to Amy that I will reveal in due course.


	8. Anger: II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What he's really doing, whether deliberately or not, is watching her. It's instinctive, and not something he can exactly control, but every word, every action, every little thing he finds out about the woman he once thought of as his Amy gets catalogued, dissected and analysed in that intricate mind of his. Once or twice, he wonders if he's taking his agreement with her too far – but again, it's not exactly something he can consciously control and he only, only ever wants the best for her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More warnings. Same as previous.

 

"So the spare room's here. It's a bit cramped, I know…"

The Doctor looks around his new lodgings, surveying the somewhat austere spare room on the second floor of Amelia's house. She's right in saying that it's small, as there's only just enough room for a bed, a wardrobe cabinet and a little desk squashed into the corner, but he doesn't mind. He's not about to spend the whole time sleeping, after all.

He shivers a little – the warm, centrally-heated air doesn't quite reach here as it reaches everywhere else in the house, which is to be expected from a room which hasn't been used in some time. Indeed, if anything he's surprised that it doesn't look  _more_  out-of-use than it does. The pungent scent of mothballs is strong but not intoxicating, and the layer of dust on the cabinet isn't all that thick when he wipes his finger across it – indeed, a quick taste-test reveals it to be only a few months in the making.

"What're you doing?" Amelia asks upon seeing that, her voice laced with curiosity and mild suspicion.

"Oh, nothing. Just checking the place out," he says. He spins around to face her, manufacturing his usual bright and eager grin to assuage her nerves. "Thank you, Pond, this'll be fine."

She bites her lip, looking around the room with obvious distaste. "I mean, if I'd known you were gonna stay then I'd have jazzed it up a bit-"

"No, no, it's really quite alright. After all, you and I both know that we've stayed in  _far_  worse," he says with a knowing half-smile. She laughs, the sound flowing through to her shoulders as the tension drains out of them ever so slightly.

"I guess. So you'll do okay here?"

"Absolutely smashing."

"And spare clothes and stuff-"

"All sorted." Well, in reality that's a lie, but it's a useful lie and one he can maintain until the time comes for laundry. Of course, his lack of available spare clothing isn't a problem in and of itself, but even he knows that Amelia might not appreciate a mostly-naked Doctor running around (or outside) the house all day.

Well, at least he'll have things to do tomorrow – or today, more accurately given the hour of night.  _Is normal time always this confusing?_

Anyway. Amelia seems to have run out of inquiries, because she simply purses her lips and nods. "Okay. Can I leave you to sort out all your stuff on your own? It's just that – I mean, I'm a bit tired, that's all."

He waves off her concerns. "Of course. And your room is…"

"Down the hallway, right at the end," she says, before averting her eyes and biting her lip a little. At some point during the last few seconds, her shoulders have reknotted and she's beginning to fiddle with her hands again. "Just on that – I know you don't really sleep, but… I mean, um, if you need something during the night, just  _do it_ , alright? Don't – um, I mean, I'm not trying to be rude, but-"

"Hey, it's okay," the Doctor says, cutting her off. Her sudden display of nerves alarms him a little, and he raises her chin gently with his hand, bringing her eyes back to his to calm her down. "I'll be fine on my own, I'm the Doctor. I won't bother you if you don't want me to."

She stares at him, her olive-green eyes flicking between both of his own, before finally,  _mercifully_ , relaxing. "Oh – okay. Sorry. I just – I need to sleep, that's all, and I'd appreciate not being disturbed in the middle of the night."

The natural response to that – the  _only_  response – is to hug her, quickly and with a comforting rub of her back to round it off. "Of course," he says.

Really, it's not a very big deal at all; he's known Amy –  _Amelia –_ for a  _long_  time, both in terms of his lifespan and hers, so it's no grand revelation that she's eager to get an unbroken night's rest. She hasn't ever been an easy sleeper, and there's no reason for that to have improved.

What  _has_  changed is that she's now oddly nervous about mentioning it. It's not shocking by any stretch of the imagination, but it's definitely odd. After all, she  _knows_  that he's aware of it, and she knows that he's been aware of it for years. They'd even shared one or two late-night adventures together, filling the time that she'd otherwise have spent staring blankly at the star-filled ceiling in her room.

So why would it bother her so much now? Or, more specifically, why is it bothering her that he knows about it?

But it's not important. What's important is that she's here, he's here, they're standing less than a metre apart and they're smiling at each other.

"Good night, Doctor," she says.

"Good night, Amelia."

* * *

_The rain is cold._

_So, so cold. It falls upon her in a constant, torrential downpour, wave upon wave of freezing water hammering down on her as she staggers blindly about._

_She's trying to get home – or at least, she thinks she's trying to get home. The deluge has created an impenetrable grey wall in every direction around her, and she has no idea where she's been, where she is or where she's going._

_All that she knows is that she's cold, and the water is rising._

_She tries crying out for help again and again, but her pleas are swatted away by the incessant roar of the storm. She thinks that maybe once, just once, there's a voice answering her – but who, and from where?_

_She can't see. She can't hear. Her legs are numb, her hands are numb, her everything is numb. She's lost and she's cold… so very, very cold._

_She collapses to her knees, half-frozen, drenched to the core, beaten at last by the ceaseless blows—_

—And wakes, gasping as her eyes fly open.

Almost immediately, Amelia closes them again as brilliant sunlight assaults her vision. It takes her more than a minute for her breath to normalise and her eyes to lose their sensitivity, and it's not helped by the fact that she feels just  _awful._ She's covered in a cold, sticky sweat – not unlike her last dream, she realises with an unpleasant jolt – which makes her shirt cling to her in all the wrong places. Not only that, her hair is a tangled, frayed mess suitable only for the most intrepid of explorers, and her head… yeah.

She knows a thing or two about a solid hangover, but this one is particularly bad – like she's been smacked over the head several times with a mallet.

 _This is why alcohol and sleeping pills don't mix, kids,_ she thinks sullenly as she tries to stretch herself out. She'd stopped drinking well before she'd gotten to bed – she thinks – and had only taken the pills when she was almost crazed with exhaustion, but even then she'd known that it was probably a bad idea.

She limps out of her room and down the hallway, wishing (not for the first time) for a magical hangover cure to make her feel presentable.

Well, at a bare minimum, a shower should help.

She stops in front of the mirror upon reaching the bathroom, and takes a moment to have a good, hard look at herself. She doesn't like what she sees – her hair is just as bad as she had suspected upon waking up, her skin is blotchy and pale and there are unsightly bags under her bloodshot eyes.

 _And to think I used to be a model_ , she thinks – followed by a bitter, audible laugh escaping her. If the agencies had seen her like this, she wouldn't have gotten a single job – but of course, she doesn't work in that industry any more, and thank god for that.

Fifteen minutes later, she steps out of the shower feeling marginally more like a human being, and trudges downstairs to make herself a badly-needed coffee. She doesn't recall much of last evening, but she does remember leaving a mess – did she have someone over last night? A part of her thinks so, but the rest of her dismisses it as a silly dream.

 _You should really stop drinking so much, Amelia Pond –_ but like she's about to do that.

She staggers into her kitchen… and has the breath knocked out of her.

"What the hell?" she gasps out, taking in the scene before her.

It's as if someone's ripped out her old kitchen, taken a brand-spanking new one and placed it right where the old one used to be. Every dish has been cleaned and stacked neatly in the rack and every surface has been wiped down to a gleaming finish, with even the appliances sparkling in the mid-morning sun.

"I was wondering when you'd be up," a voice says right behind her. She spins around in an instant, her eyes wide as they take in the familiar angular features of the Doctor.

_Oh._

The memories come flooding back in an instant – the shocked meeting at the door, the reunion over dinner, the long chats deep into the night, the decision to let him stay – she remembers all of it, and the sudden recall momentarily leaves her mind totally blank.

"You're… you're here," she eventually says, as much to herself as to him. "You're real."

He frowns at her slightly, cocking his head inquisitively. "'Course I'm real. At least, I think I'm real." As if to prove the point, he smacks himself hard on the forehead. "Ah! See? Very real," he says, rubbing his hand.

Normally, this would be her cue to laugh at him and make some cutting remark, but she still feels too… well, too shitty for that. Instead, she gives him a tired half smile and rests her head on the doorframe.

"So you were the one who cleaned the kitchen?" she asks.

"Yep," he answers brightly. "And the rest of the downstairs rooms too, though only after I did the laundry."

She stares at him. "Wait –  _already_?"

He looks puzzled – how on earth is he  _puzzled?_  "Well, you did ask me to."

"It isn't even eleven o'clock. You haven't even been staying here ten hours yet!"

If anything, his eyes simply widen at that piece of information. "Eleven o'clock  _already?_  Goodness, how time flies, eh?" he says, before breaking out into a wide grin. "Anyway, anything else you need sorting?"

An entire catalogue of tasks not dealt with, debts not paid and scores not settled parades into her head – before marching right out again. She really,  _really_  isn't capable of anything like coherent thought at the moment.

Still. At least there's one thing she's absolutely sure she wants. "Coffee," she says bluntly. "Like, right now."

He gets the message.

* * *

To her surprise, life with the Doctor is rather calm. Sedate, even.

Alright, nothing will be  _completely_  normal whenever he's involved, but the abnormalities are surprisingly nice ones. No alien invasions, for one thing, and it's not like she objects to what  _does_  change in her life.

Evidently not content with 'only' being responsible for cleaning half the house, he takes on more and more duties until by the end of the week, Amelia is half-joking that she's found her own butler.

"I can be that too, if you like," he replies brightly when she says that. For a moment, she thinks he's being serious – until he does the most absurdly exaggerated bow she's ever seen, and all questions of seriousness fly straight out the window.

She doesn't mind in the slightest, though. It frees up more time for life and work, and she needs all the time she can get for the latter. It takes him a few days, but he seems to get that too – at least, he gets that she's actually busy when she withdraws to her room and laptop for hours on end.

There's… other things too. Weirder things. Like, for example, when he barges into her room one afternoon just before the New Year, asking for a spare spark plug.

"A  _spark plug?_  For what?"

"For the car, of course," he says. "What else are spark plugs for?"

"I don't even  _have_ a car!" she exclaims, utterly baffled, but already she's out of her chair and racing downstairs – and lo and behold, there's a brand-spanking new car sitting in front of her door.

Well, in honesty it's not brand-spanking new at all, in fact it's rather old, grey and beaten up – but it  _is_  a car, and apparently it's hers. She immediately rounds on him to demand how the hell he'd gotten a  _car_ , but he just shrugs.

"There was a man a few blocks away trying to fix it. He offered to sell it to me for a few hundred pounds when I asked what he was doing, and I wasn't about to turn down a deal like that." He scratches his chin, deep in thought. "Poor chap seemed rather annoyed with the whole situation – oh well. Anyway, we pushed it over here and I've been trying to fix it all afternoon."

She rubs her temples, trying to remove the newfound throbbing sensation in her head. "Well – okay, great. Thanks. Just  _tell_   _me_  next time you're going to do something like this, yeah? I don't want to wake up with a llama in the living room or some other rubbish that you've dragged in from the cold."

He looks affronted, but she knows it's an act. " _Amelia._  I wouldn't dare."

She chuckles, smiling wryly. "You totally would."

"I wouldn't," he repeats, much more confidently this time. "By the way, what happened to the old car? The nice red one."

For a moment she's at a loss to know what he's talking about – but she soon remembers, as she casts her mind right back to the day she'd gotten this house in the first place.

"Oh, that," she says, waving her hand casually. "I haven't had that car in ages, Rory took it with him when we split up, ya know?"

At once, silence falls between them, awkward, horrible, and lasting far, far too long.

"Oh," the Doctor finally says, in a voice far too flat and quiet to be natural. "Yes. That makes sense."

She flinches inwardly – she should have chosen her words much, much more carefully. "Doctor-"

"No, no, I understand," he interjects with a bright and cheery smile – far too much so. "It's alright. You've moved on."

She stares at him briefly, wondering if those three words really are as hollow as she thinks or whether she's just losing her mind.

* * *

It's probably the latter, to be honest, as evidenced by the very existence of the appointment she has later that day.

"So he came back."

Amelia shifts nervously in the mouth-eaten couch, focussing her gaze on the pot plant in the corner of the office – it's still alive and vaguely green, but it's wilted and clearly in dire need of some tender loving care… just like her, she guesses.

Just like her.

"Yeah. He came back," she says, with a thin half-smile.

"After how long?" Dr Hotham's voice is calm and soft, a soothing presence that belies the undercurrent of anxiety which she'd once felt every time she'd one of these fortnightly sessions. She looks up to see him peering over steel-rimmed glasses, a picture of patience and understanding.

"Seven years." She sighs, aware of how stupid this all sounds – then again, the simple fact that she  _still_  has therapy sessions is proof enough that even stupid things still get through the defences she so laughably pretends are impenetrable.

"And how do you feel?"

"Fine." The word falls out of her mouth automatically, on instinct, and she immediately regrets it – this one isn't like the others, this one actually makes an attempt to understand her, and he allows her to be  _herself_  in their sessions even if she doesn't. "Well – mostly fine. I'm sleeping a bit better these days, and the Ambien is helping a lot."

He smiles at her – kindly, which even now is a pleasant surprise for her. "That's good, but I think you know that's not quite what I meant."

She swallows, nervously scratching one of her scars on her forearm. They don't hurt, not any more, not in the way that they used to, the way she was addicted to – but still, the itch remains, a permanent reminder on her skin of the choices she'd made and the consequences she'd failed to run away from.

"I – well, he was my friend. Like, he was my best friend. For the longest time he was my whole world, and I couldn't really  _live_  without him."

"And now? How do you feel about him now?"

She bites her lip, recalling every laugh, every smile, every amazing world and unforgettable experience she'd had at his side, hand in hand with her imaginary friend – but also the hurt, the loneliness, the seemingly bottomless despair, the shattered marriage, the bite of the blade in her hand…

"I don't know," she says quietly –  _truthfully_. "I just don't know."

* * *

The New Year comes and goes – though not before Amelia's spent all of New Year's Eve with her friends, only returning home blind drunk at six in the morning the next day.

To be honest, that's starting to become a real concern to the Doctor. Not so much the staying-out-all-night or partying with her friends – he loves a good party – but more the drinking. Fine, he might not be human and he not be completely across this 'normal life' thing, but Amelia is twenty-nine. Isn't she supposed to be at the  _settling down_  sort of age for ordinary human beings?

He's not one to judge, but when he sees her staggering about the place, slurring her words and giggling incoherently at the slightest prompt, he has to wonder. Aloud.

"Shut the hell up, Doctor. You're not my dad," she snaps, the humour dying from her face and her eyes glinting dangerously. He gets the gist immediately: she's independent, she runs her own life, and it's not his place to interfere… but that doesn't mean he has to like it.

It's not all bad news, though. She has job which keeps her busy, and which she seems to enjoy – that's a start, surely? All misgivings aside, she seems to be running a completely normal life and running it with alacrity. Isn't that good enough?

For his part, he spends most of the day – when she's at work – in and around the house, doing little odd jobs like repairing the fence, redecorating the bathroom and painting Amelia's car. On top of that, he starts helping out at the local library which, to his surprise, is far more rewarding and enjoyable than he could've predicted.

And he loves dropping in on her at work.

He starts doing that in February, about a month and a half after they'd started living together. He'd held off for a while, out of respect for her day job but after a while, even a city as diverse and teeming with energy as London… well, he did have a habit of getting easily bored. There's nothing especially interesting about her office, either, all whitewashed walls, repetitive square cubicles and dull cream lights, but at least  _she's_  there.

She's more than a little surprised to see him, to say the least; though in hindsight that may be more to do with the way he'd crept up silently on her and tapped her on the shoulder with a loud "Hello, Pond!"

"Doctor,  _seriously,_ " she splutters, climbing back into her chair after quite literally falling off with a piercing scream that had turned every head in the room. "Don't  _do_ that!"

"Sorry," he apologises sheepishly, glancing about nervously at the assortment of curious glances at his direction. He quickly takes a seat next to Amelia, so as to stop drawing unwanted attention to himself.

"Seriously, you're gonna kill me one day."

"I said I was sorry! I was just trying to be discreet, that's all."

She snorts and laughs a little, her shoulders unknotting now that the initial shock has subsided. "You, discreet? Yeah, I can definitely see that."

" _Amelia_. Your sarcasm wounds me."

"Then I guess we're even," she says with a grin and a playful jab of his arm. "What're you doing here, anyway?"

"Oh, you know. Seeing the sights. Checking things out. Just dropping by. All the usual things," he says with a sprightly grin, which quickly widens as a little bright light goes off in his head. "Say, how about you and me go out and have some fun?"

Her face momentarily brighten, that familiar jolt of excitement running through her at the offer. "What d'you have in mind?"

"Oh, loads of things. We could go jet-skiing on the river, we could climb the Shard and I've met this lovely chap who's offered to teach me how to fly a helicopter."

Her eyes widen, her mouth falling slightly agape. "A helicopter?"

"Yep, a real life, full-blooded helicopter, with rotors whizzing around and around and around," he says with the air of a five-year-old on a sugar rush. Just to emphasise the point, he takes hold of Amelia's chair and spinning it about with all his strength, eliciting a high pitched yelp from her as she twirls about. He chuckles, waiting for her to slow to a stop.

"So… what do you say?" he asks when she finally comes to a halt. "You, me and London for the afternoon. Just the Doctor and Amelia Pond, doing what we do best."

Her face is slightly flushed and she's breathless as she her eyes flicker between his, biting her lips as he awaits her decision. She's tempted, he  _knows_  she's tempted, and he knows that she's not one to resist what he offers her-

"No."

He does a double-take. Had he heard correctly? "Sorry?"

"No," she repeats, this time firmly. "Sorry, but it's busy around here and I really have to work. Maybe another time."

_Oh._

"Right – yes. Work. Makes perfect sense," he jabbers, putting on his most understand smile.

He must have changed tack too quickly, because her face immediately falls and she starts apologising – though for what, he has no idea.

"I wish I could, really-"

"No, no. It's quite alright." And it  _is_  alright. He can enjoy himself perfectly well on his own, and besides, barging in on her work life isn't exactly helping her, as tempting as it may seem.

And that's why he's here, really. To help her.

* * *

That's not all he's really doing, though.

What he's  _really_  doing, whether deliberately or not, is watching her. It's instinctive, and not something he can exactly control, but every word, every action, every little thing he finds out about the woman he once thought of as  _his_  Amy gets catalogued, dissected and analysed in that intricate mind of his. Once or twice, he wonders if he's taking his agreement with her too far – but again, it's not exactly something he can consciously control and he only,  _only_  ever wants the best for her.

Three months in, however, the pattern is starting to become abundantly clear: he can watch, wait on her, he can clean up, he can try to  _help_  her as much as he likes… so long as he doesn't interfere. It's exactly like that old rule of the Time Lords, the one he'd told her about so many years ago and never followed: observe, but do not interfere.

Well, he's sure following it now.

And it works, to his surprise. It's tenuous, but their unspoken agreement seems to be holding up. He helps around the house, does the laundry, fixes her back fence, cleans the attic, repairs the car – but he doesn't ever ask about where she disappears to every Friday night, he holds his tongue when she staggers half-dressed through the door, smelling of alcohol and sweat, and he never talks about the bizarre mood swings she seems so prone to these days.

That doesn't mean he isn't watching worrying of course – he's doing both, in abundant amounts, but he  _does not interfere._  That is his agreement with her, and it's one he's definitely intending to uphold.

Definitely.

And it's not like life with her is unpleasant, far from it. She's far from stuck in one place, as she often disappears for several days on assignment, being a travel journalist and occasional foreign correspondent and all that. He'd love nothing more than to travel with her, but it soon transpires that plane tickets are a little costly.

He's not all that fussed, though, as he enjoys himself too – after all, he's spending time with her, which is always nice. In addition, London keeps surprising him by throwing up no end of new, inventive and occasionally dangerous ways to keep him occupied. Once, he even manages to get her to get a little time off work, which she spends showing him around the city… in theory.

The reality is rather different.

"Well, it's not every day you find a Zygon mothership buried under Piccadilly," he'd ventures after they'd fallen down a disguised vent right into the bowels of the hidden spaceship.

She simply rolls her eyes and laughs.

* * *

As time goes on, and winter breaks into spring, the  _no interfering_  rule seems to be increasingly justified, because he can't hand-on-heart say that Amelia is living a  _bad_  life. In fact, judging by the quality of her fortnightly columns for the Times, she seems to be leading quite a successful one.

She makes him read them out to him every Sunday evening on the couch, her head resting on his shoulder as the cadence of his voice brings the subtle rhythms and vibrant imagery of her writing to life. It was something he'd decided to do… well, because he could, really, but she seems to enjoy it so much that they make it a routine, weekly event.

He's hardly complaining about that, of course, given how evocative, how superb her writing actually is.

"I did enjoy writing that one," she murmurs from somewhere near his shoulder, her eyes still closed and a satisfied half-smile painted across her features. He puts an arm around her, squeezing her shoulders gently.

"It does rather make me want to go back to New York in the near future," he says, putting the newspaper clipping back down on the table.

"As if you need an excuse. How many times did we go, four?"

"Nothing wrong with five," he points out.

"Huh, maybe when I've got some time off and a bit more cash," she muses, mostly to herself. After all, she is busy, and busy is good.

So yes. Amelia Pond is leading a good life, a successful life, and above all a  _happy_  life. It's exactly what she deserves, and it's why he doesn't interfere.

Even with the drinking.

And the one-night-stands.

And the rolling headaches, and the hangovers, and the insomnia.

By now he's worked out that all those things are evidently part of a normal,  _human_  life, which is something he's precluded from having first-hand experience of – and besides,  _he does not interfere._

At all.

Ever.

* * *

He's kept that other agreement he's had with her too, namely that he doesn't enter her room after midnight. Quite frankly, he has no reason to. He has plenty to do after hours, as the nightlife is fantastic – he's particularly fond of one stray cat down by Cottersville Street – and she  _is_  an insomniac who is forever in need of more sleep.

It does make the house a little too quiet for his tastes, but that just gives him an opportunity to finally sit and finish that novel he's been meaning to read for years now: a galactically renowned Skyllian epic involving an, immortal old man, his mortal yet indomitable lover, and their quest to defeat the forces of darkness.

At least, he  _would_  finish it… if he could find it.

_Damn._

In all honesty, he's amazed he hasn't woken her up as a result of his search, as he suspects he's turned over most of the house in hope of finding the battered old book. By two o'clock, though, he's found no trace of it and has been reduced to standing in his room, scratch his head in bemusement and wondering where it could have got to.

After all, the house isn't all that big, and he's searched the kitchen, the lounge room, both bathrooms, the laundry, the back garden – everywhere except Amelia's bedroom.

_Amelia's bedroom._

His eyes widen inadvertently as it hits him.  _Oh, bugger._  He'd left it there for her to have a look at when she had time, and he'd simply forgotten to get it back.

He purses his lips, juggling his options. Really, there's only two options: try to last the night without any reading, or go into her room and get it.

He shouldn't. He knows he shouldn't. He has an  _agreement…_  but on the other hand, five hours with nothing to do is a surefire way to make him lose his mind and it's only a book, after all. What could happen?

He tiptoes down the hallway as silently as he can, as if the slightest noise will instantly alert her to his attentions. The door to her room is shut tight when he reaches it, and he grips the handle, ever-so-slowly turns it – but it creaks. Loudly.

He freezes.  _Uh oh._  Surely she'd have heard that?

He flinches and waits, rapidly preparing his excuses and wondering if it would be best for him to stay and pretend that nothing is happening, or bolt and try to dodge her wrath… yet nothing happens. His hand is still on the door handle, twisting it to its fullest extent, but there's absolutely no response from the woman on the other side.

He takes a single, deep breath, and pushes, feeling the door swing open, a gentle warmth brushing past his cheek as the trapped air of the room makes its escape into the hallway beyond. He pauses for a moment, fully expecting Amelia to jump out of bed and start yelling her head off – but she doesn't. Instead, the room is filled with the soothing, rhythmic noises of gentle snoring.

At last, he exhales.  _Must really be sound asleep._  Relieved, he tiptoes through the room to retrieve his book, safe in the knowledge that he's not going to disturb a rare good night's rest. The book is on her bedside table, beneath a pair of reading glasses and a bottle of sleeping pills.

He inspects the bottle carefully, frowning a little _._  Well, that explains why she's sleeping so deeply at least. He makes a mental note to ask her about it – until he remembers his rule.  _No interfering._

_Right._

He grabs up the leather-bound, worn novel and makes to leave – but not before he spots something decidedly odd on Amelia's wrist.

A mark. Just visible above the sleeve of her nightdress.

He immediately sets the book back down, his frown having returned with interest, and bends down to inspect – yes, there's definitely a mark there, perhaps a cut. He won't be able to tell exactly what it is in this light, not unless he rolls her sleeves down to get a better look. The curtains are drawn tightly shut, the only light in the room coming from the doorway – and that's currently doing nothing to illuminate her arm, shadowed as it is by her slight frame.

He hesitates, aware that he's about to come very close to the crossing the line into interfering… but he's just curious, that's all. He's not  _doing_  anything. Just looking.

Carefully, with the delicate control of a surgeon, he rolls down her sleeve and gently lifts her hand so it's illuminated completely by the light streaming from the hallway beyond – and gasps.

He's right. There's a cut on her wrist… but not just one.

No, there's a  _lot_ more than one cut on her wrist. At first blush, there has to be at least a dozen. All deep, jagged gashes to her arm, some purpling to black scars embedded deep into her skin, some still raw and half-healed wounds still red with ugly scabs.

He swallows, trying to hold back the nauseous tide rising with the convulsions in his stomach, and tries to look away – but he can't. It's one of the most horrifying, sickening things he's seen in a long, long time, but he simply can't tear his eyes away. So he closes them briefly, wincing as he does so, and sets her arm back down, accidentally rubbing it with the sleeve of her nightdress.

As was the case on Christmas, her reaction is immediate and instinctive. She draws her arms instantly into herself, her entire body jerking from the motion. For a moment, a chill runs down the Doctor's spine, as he's sure he's pushed his luck too far – but no, she's still asleep, if looking far less comfortable and very, very  _small._

She murmurs a little in her sleep, whimpering softly – he sighs, bending down and flicking away the sheet of hair which had fallen across her face. Her brow is furrowed, her pale face troubled by some nameless dream keeping her from the peace she so desperately requires.

He places his palm on her forehead and closes his eyes.

"Oh,  _Amelia._ "


	9. Anger: III

Six o’clock.

That had been the plan. Meet up at the bar at six o’clock for drinks and general catch-up; that had been the idea. She’d even managed to get her boss to let her off half an hour early just so she get to the bar in time.

She might as well not have bothered, however, given that her watch now reads six thirty.

“Anything I can get you, Laura?” the gruff bartender asks from behind the counter, breaking into her little internal stew.

She thinks it over for a few seconds. She doesn’t intend on getting overly drunk tonight, not in these circumstances, and it’s only six thirty – but damn it, she’s thirsty and _bored_ , so why the fuck not?

“Get me a Sangria, David,” she orders once she’s made her decision, “with extra brandy for the kick.”

The bartender raises an eyebrow at her. “That bored?”

Laura chuckles lightly, but in a clipped, almost sarcastic manner which makes no apologies for her obvious frustration. Not with _him_ , of course, she’s gone to this bar with the same bartender – David – since she was eighteen. She’s well used to him reading into her orders by now.

“You’ve got no idea,” she says, a little grimly.

“Waiting for someone?”

 _Perceptive bastard._ But she likes that about him. “Yeah.”

“I’m guessing it’s Sophia?” he asks behind his back as he makes her much-needed drink. “Is she going to drop by?”

“Yes,” a lilting, gentle voice replies from behind Laura, so suddenly she almost jumps out of her chair, “she is.”

Laura turns to see a kind-faced taking a seat right behind her, the woman shrugging off her overcoat and sweeping a lock of chocolate-brown, shoulder-length hair out of her eyes. However, as usual her fringe refuses to be tamed, falling back right across her face again, giving her a slightly windswept yet captivating appearance that only serves to enhance the clear, entrancing blue light of her eyes. She looks over at David the bartender, giving him a flashing, warm smile.

“Wine if you please, David,” she says, “the best sparkling white you’ve got.”

Laura feels that little ball of tension that had been gradually building in her chest disappear, as it always does when she sees this woman, the light of her life. Not that Laura’s smiling – yet. “You’re late.”

“Sorry, darling,” Sophia answers, lounging back on the bar stool, utterly at ease with the world. “I had stay back to sort out something with one of our clients’ big fish. You know how these corporate takeovers work,” she says, giving her wife a quick kiss to mollify her.

Laura licks her lips a little, briefly savouring the taste. “Hmm. Don’t know if I forgive you yet.”

“Really?” Sophia cocks an eyebrow, a subtle yet staggeringly suggestive gesture when directed in Laura’s direction. “Maybe later then.”

Laura has to fight hard to keep the blush down. “We’re in public, Soph, get your mind out of the gutter.”

“No idea what you mean,” Sophia replies in a sweet, innocent lilt, just barely hiding the smirk threatening to break out across her face as David passes them their drinks. “Anyway, seen Amelia around?”

Laura shakes her head. “Apparently she’s running even later than you were. She texted me about an hour back to say that she was bringing a friend, but I haven’t heard from her since.”

A raised eyebrow. “A friend? Who?”

“Wouldn’t say, apart from that we haven’t met him yet.”

Sophia smacks her lips pensively. “You think she has a new boyfriend?”

“Yep.” Despite what she tells them and may think, Amelia isn’t particularly hard to predict when it comes to relationships.

“Huh. It’s been seven months, hasn’t it?” Sophia asks.

“About that, yeah. Hope this guy is better than the last douchebag she picked up.”

Sophia twists her face into just about the ugliest expression she can produce. “God, him. What was his name again? Jim?”

“Dunno, I just called him douchebag,” Laura says with a shrug and laugh – but a brief, somewhat mirthless laugh, the joke tempered by the memories of the unholy mess that had been their friend’s last attempt at a serious relationship – not to mention _that_ month which had followed.

In fairness, it could’ve been worse, as anyone close to Amelia well knows. Not that there are too many people close to her these days – a situation which is deeply uncomfortable to everyone save for Amelia herself. Well, Sophia and Laura are both aware of how much she likes to keep her cards hidden against her chest, so they’ve long since stopped questioning it.

After all, not having many _close_ friends isn’t quite the same as not having friends more generally, and she has plenty of those. Had sex with plenty of them too, or so Laura suspects. Not that there’s anything wrong with that in and of itself, of course.

Anyway, they’re not here to worry about her life choices. No, they’re here to worry about why the hell she hasn’t shown up yet.

Ten minutes pass. She still hasn’t shown up.

Twenty. Laura’s starting to get fidgety now.

“Easy, love,” Sophia croons, though there’s something in her eyes which betrays her own discomfiture. “I’m sure she’ll show up soon.”

“It’s not like her to be this late. You know big she is with punctuality,” Laura points out.

“Yeah, I know, but I’m sure she’s got a good reason,” Sophia counters.

“Probably having a quickie with her new boyfriend,” Laura mutters, to a rolling laugh from her wife.

Half an hour passes, and eventually the two of them manage to distract themselves with small talk. It’s been a long, hard day at the office at the end of a long, hard week for the both of them, after all, so it’s a good chance for them to take a moment to unwind and just be in the other’s presence for a moment-

“Hey, sorry I’m late!” a voice suddenly yells out from across the bar, shocking both of them out of a little intimate moment they’d been sharing. It takes a moment for Laura to place the voice, patently directed towards them, but she soon works out that the woman’s accent is quite distinctly Scottish.

She turns to see Amelia Pond rushing towards her, and it’s not long before she’s given both her and Sophia tight, crushing hugs before taking a seat right in between the pair of them. Laura takes a moment or two to disentangle herself, a relieved smile already making its way to her face – she hasn’t seen her in _ages_ , as Amelia’s often been on assignment for her job.

She briefly runs her friend up and down to take in her appearance. Amelia’s certainly dressed for the occasion, with an eye-catching black number cut a few inches above her knees, just low enough for Laura to confidently class it as ‘damn sexy’. She’s also brushed her hair into gentle curls which tumble across her shoulder, a quite beautiful effect – or it would’ve been, if Amelia hadn’t looked like she’d just come straight from a marathon.

“Sorry about that,” she forces out between audible gulps of air, still clearly short of breath with her cheeks flushed a bright pink. “I got held up.”

Laura can’t help but raise both eyebrows at her friend. “Not like _that_ ,” Amelia says, glowering at her.

“I’m sure. So where’s your new boyfriend anyway?”

Another glare. “He’s not my _boyfriend,_ he’s just _-_ ”

Laura doesn’t immediately find out what _he_ is, though, as for the third time in an hour a newcomer’s voice almost makes her leap straight off her chair, this one saying, “Pond, will you come see this?”

Seemingly out of nowhere, a man in a bow-tie has appeared right at Amelia’s side and had begun gently tugging on her arm, excitedly pointing at a wooden banister in the middle of the room-

“-the craftsmanship is quite delightful, surely from the 19th century, from pristine northern… oh.” The man pauses, evidently noticing that Amelia is not, in fact, alone. “Hello.”

If Amelia is disconcerted by his behaviour, she doesn’t really show it because she simply giggles, rolls her eyes and motions to both her and Sophia. “Soph, Laura, this is the Doctor, who I’ve told you about. Doctor, this is Sophia and this is Laura, my best mates.”

“How d’you do?” the Doctor asks, giving both of them a kiss on the cheek – or, at least, Laura thinks it was _supposed_ to be a kiss on the cheek, but more honestly it’s aimed more at the air somewhere to the side. “I’m the Doctor, I’m Amelia’s friend.”

She shares a glance with Sophia.

_The Doctor._

Right.

“He’s been staying with me for a while, I forgot to tell you guys,” Amelia is saying, speaking at double her usual pace in her adrenaline-filled excitement. “It’s good that I got some time off today, though, so we can all meet up – though _someone_ got us distracted on the way,” she adds with a pointed glare.

“Hey!” The Doctor pouts, looking affronted. “I told you, I had no idea.”

“I _said_ that the lift was out of order, yeah?”

“That wasn’t a lift! It was an interdimensional portal to a planet of malignant lava bugs. Slight difference.”

Amelia rolls her eyes, but the smile hasn’t left. “You’re lucky my dress didn’t get burnt, this cost me almost a hundred quid.”

“Well it didn’t, so quit the moaning, Pond.”

“Oh, shut up.”

Another glance. Sophia is still smiling, but there’s something slightly fixed about it. Laura immediately knows that she’s thinking along the same lines as herself, even if they have no idea what Amelia and the Doctor are going on about.

Meanwhile, David has sidled up to their end of the bar and is asking Amelia what she’d like.

“Scotch. And my friend will have an orange juice and vodka, but go easy on the vodka,” Amelia adds with a wry smirk in the Doctor’s direction. Any insinuation seems to fly straight over his head, however, because he just gives her a puzzled look.

“Orange juice and vodka?”

“Yeah,” Amelia replies, still grinning broadly. “Great drink for wide-eyed, innocent boys.”

“ _Amelia!_ ”

She giggles, punching him lightly on the arm. Her eyes are sparkling, in a way Laura hasn’t seen in god-knows-how-long. “What? You’ll love it, I’m sure.”

Laura shares more glance with her wife, this time for longer, and the silent communication that passes between them tells her that Sophia’s had enough. She quietly taps Amelia on the shoulder mid-laugh, speaking so softly, so gently that the sound barely carries to Laura’s ears.

“Can I talk to you outside for a minute?”

* * *

Amelia really should be wearing a different dress.

She doesn’t really know _why_ she decided to wear it in the first place, frankly. Even with her hardy Scottish heritage, the weather is much too cold to be wearing such a dress like this – not to mention the dangers posed to it by the brief sojourn the Doctor and she had taken to some unknown Planet of the Volcanoes. The problem there had been the precise opposite of cold, especially when they’d come within inches of tumbling into a giant pit of spewing lava, though she still had fun.

Here, now, outside the bar in the March twilight, however, in between the shivers she’s beginning to seriously wonder what she’d been thinking.

Is she trying to impress him? What, with her looks and legs? This dress would work wonders with those to whom she shows them a little thigh, flashes her most seductive smile, whispers a few suggestions and gets to fuck her senseless. It’s an art, and one she’s perfected being an ex-kissogram and all that – but he’s never been one of _those_ people, not since… yeah. Not for a long time.

Frankly, the concept that he could be remotely impressed by her looks and antics is rather pathetic. He’d never taken an interest in her in _that_ way, but that doesn’t mean she’s not trying. It just means that the word ‘pathetic’ applies to something else entirely. He’d even guilt-tripped her – accidentally, she’s sure – into stopping that sort behaviour over the last few weeks, yet here she is going to a bar in _this_ dress, isn’t she?

She shakes her head. _Get a grip, will you?_ She really shouldn’t be using hindsight to overthink something like a snap decision about her clothing for the night. Thankfully, she doesn’t have to overthink for much longer as the door to the bar swings open behind her and Sophia emerges, dressed _far_ more sensibly – not to mention, classily – than herself.

“Took your sweet time,” Amelia says with a half-smile. Sophia had been the one who had wanted a chat, after all.

“Sorry about that,” Sophia replies, “your friend wanted to ask me something. I was wondering when Laura and I were going meet him, you know.”

Amelia’s eyes widen. “What d’you mean?”

“We’ve barely seen you for months, honey. I was getting worried, but Laura had other ideas.” Sophia smiles thinly, as they walk down a narrow alley out the back of the bar to gain some privacy.

“Doesn’t automatically mean that it’d be _him_ ,” Amelia points out, knowing that she doesn’t need to specify who she’s referring to. She rarely uses the Doctor’s name in conversations when he isn’t present, so it’s not a new habit. “I could’ve gotten a boyfriend.”

“After Jim? Unlikely.”

“He was a dickhead. It doesn’t exactly affect my future prospects,” Amelia says, her voice gaining a subtle, brittle edge.

“It did for a month or two,” Sophia says softly, stopping and turning to look at her friend. “You do remember how scared Laura and I were, don’t you? For about the third time?”

She swallows, and unbidden the scars on her forearms start tingling again. She’d spent an age locked in the bathroom meticulously hiding them with makeup, but that hadn’t erased them from existence, even if it’d erased them from sight.

“That wasn’t about some stupid boy, Soph,” she replies quietly, carefully keeping her voice rigidly under control.

Amelia’s endured far worse – physically _and_ emotionally – than anything she’d gone through with any of the blokes she’s dated over the last four years _. Far_ worse. And besides, she hadn’t been lying when she said that _it_ hadn’t been the result of some prick she’d hooked up with.

“He’s gone,” Amelia continues, “and I hope he jumps off a cliff for all I care. What’s that got to do with me? What’s that got to do with the Doctor?”

“I think you already know the answer to that, Amelia.” Sophia looks straight at her, her expression sombre and her brow furrowed. “I’ve seen married couples who show less affection for each other than you two.”

“Yeah, and?” Amelia doesn’t understand why she’s suddenly feeling so defensive, really. Ordinarily she’d attribute it to jealousy, but there’s no way on earth that could be the case. Not with Sophia… not with kind, empathetic Sophia, with her stable, successful job and fulfilling marriage – everything Amelia isn’t and doesn’t have, in short.

She sighs, pushing introspection out of her mind. “We’re mates, that’s all. Why do you have such a problem with him?”

“I don’t,” Sophia counters easily. “Not really, anyway.”

“Well, you seem to care about him an awful lot.”

“I care about you,” comes the instant and simple reply.

And she does, Amelia isn’t ever going to question that. “He _was_ my best friend once, in case you’d forgotten.”

“And now?”

“Now you are.” She even smiles for effect.

Sophia sighs, just about the most obvious sign of exasperation she tends to exhibit. Clearly, that’s not the answer she wanted to hear. “When did he come back?”

“Christmas.”

“Christmas… and where’s he been staying?”

Amelia looks down, starts fiddling nervously with her hands and wrists again. “With me. In the spare bedroom.”

There’s a long silence, whilst Sophia stares dead-level at Amelia with that searching, unyielding gaze of hers, and Amelia continues to fidget ever more.

“You told me you hated him.” Sophia says, ever-so-softly.

Amelia bristles at that. “That wasn’t-”

“Did you say that or not?”

From almost anyone else that question would provoke the sharpest of responses, but Sophia has a rare gift for making her talk about things she’d otherwise never want to think about.

“You know that I wasn’t thinking straight back then. The things I – the things I said and did, I-”

“I understand, and I’m not trying to make you relive that,” Sophia replies smoothly, calmly. “I’m just trying to get things straight in my head.”

“I’m not following. That was then, this is now.”

“How can you go from hating someone to being their best friend in the space of three months?”

“I didn’t _hate_ him,” Amelia says firmly, increasingly agitated by her friend’s line of inquiry. Even if it’s Sophia questioning her, this feeling like she’s on trial over her life isn’t a comfortable one. “I was just… angry at him, that’s all.”

“And now? I’m just trying to get my head around this, honey,” Sophia says in a soothing voice, even if this cross-examination is anything but, “because from my view, it seems more than a little contradictory.”

Amelia frowns. “Contradictory…?”

One more sigh. “So let me get this straight. This guy you’re living with, he’s the same Doctor that you told me about?”

Amelia swallows, somewhat nervously and ill at ease. “Yes.”

“He’s the same Doctor that promised to take you away when you were seven, then abandoned you for fourteen years?”

She wrings her wrist. “Yes.”

“The same Doctor who left you imprisoned with deadly alien robots for _months_ , alone and with no prospect of escape?”

She flinches. Her time in the Two Streams facility – or the time she had actually experienced and remembers – is something she’s tried very hard to forget, but with little success. “Yes.”

“The same Doctor who didn’t tell you that you might be pregnant?”

She closes her eyes.

“Yes,” she says, still keeping her voice firmly under control.

“And didn’t do a thing to stop you being kidnapped?”

“ _Yes._ ” Less controlled now, and her eyes have opened again.

“And screwed up so much that your baby was stolen, and never found it?”

“ _Yes!_ ” she says, her voice shaking audibly. Whatever the case may be, Amelia Pond has plenty of limits and she’s very, _very_ close to being pushed over them.

“So then how-”

“You don’t get it, do ya?” she snarls, rounding on her best friend, leering menacingly over her. Her face is twisted with a sudden, terrifying fury – but at whom? At what?

 “That – that wasn’t _me_. And those – those things aren’t _him_. They happened but they’re not _him_.”

Sophia seems to have realised that she’s crossed the line, as her face has paled, her eyes have gone wide and she’s slowly backing away. “Amelia-”

“No, _shut the fuck up,_ I’m talking now. You people _love_ to talk, you people _love_ to interfere. All of you, _including_ him. You think all you know what’s best for me, you all think you know exactly what’s going on, you think you all understand, but you _don’t._ You _don’t! And you never will!_ ”

She can’t remember the last time she’s unloaded like this, but _god_ it feels good. She stops for a moment to regain her breath, prepare herself for another devastating salvo – but then she catches a glimpse of precisely who she’s screaming at.

Not the monster who’d stolen her baby. Not the dickheads who’d used her, _abused_ her over the last four and a half years. Not even the Doctor.

Her best friend. One of the only people who’d been by her side when times had been darkest. One of the only people who’d truly, genuinely listened to her, without judgment or prejudice. _Her best friend…_ shrinking against a brick wall, her arms raised protectively.

_Fuck._

The adrenaline doesn’t leave Amelia’s body, but the fire does – and in its place, a terrifying, freezing emptiness. She backs away as quickly as she can – too fast, tripping over and landing flat on her back.

For a moment the scene remains frozen, with one of them cowering and terrified, the other sprawled on the ground beneath her. For a moment they just stare at each other, Amelia taking great, heaving breaths as her head spins out of control.

“Amelia?” Sophia’s voice is barely more than a broken, terrified whisper, but her hands are lowering as she slowly regains her composure. The adrenaline has now all but left Amelia’s system, leaving her feeling totally winded.

“Oh my god… Amelia!”

She must look quite a state, because Sophia is the one who recovers first, scrambling forwards and bending down to offer Amelia a hand. She stares at it for a moment, her brain much too scrambled to process the sudden change in events. Hadn’t she just been screaming blue murder at her?

The hand is still shaking – which means that yes, she had been.

“Amelia, I’m so sorry. Are you alright? Here, I’ll help you up,” Sophia says, her voice still unsteady and unusually high-pitched but holding no sign of anger.

 _Apologise_ , a voice tells her. Amelia knows it’s the right thing to do – but-

“Come on, it doesn’t matter,” Sophia intones, her voice rapidly calming. “Forget about it and let me help you up.”

 _Are you a coward, Amelia?_ Still Amelia stares at the hand. _Apologise, now._

“I’m-”

“Amelia, it’s really okay. I’m the one who should be sorry for asking those things, you don’t need to apologise to me.”

 _You do, Amelia. Don’t be a piss-weak excuse of a human being._ She grits her teeth at the thought-

“Amelia?”

-and grabs the hand, pulling herself up and into Sophia’s waiting arms. They share a quick hug, before Sophia breaks off, gazing at her – but not with her usual soothing warmth. No, her eyes are still a little too wide, and her face too pale for that. Amelia flinches.

“I shouldn’t have-”

“No, don’t apologise. Just forget about it.” Sophia says firmly, even if her voice even now hasn’t totally levelled off. She grabs Amelia’s hand, squeezing it comfortingly. “I shouldn’t have pushed you so hard, that was stupid of me… though I’ll admit that you are a little scarier than you think,” she jokes weakly.

It doesn’t help. “Sophia, I’m-”

“I’m serious, Amelia. Forget about it. This never happened. Okay?”

Amelia’s mouth is still open, and her brain is saying sorry – but her head is nodding. “Okay – yeah.  Thanks.”

“Any time. Come on, let’s go back and have some drinks,” Sophia says, her voice returning to its usual pleasant lilt. “The others’ll be waiting.”

“Ha. Yeah.” Amelia returns the warm smile, but she doesn’t immediately follow after Sophia when she turns to head back to the bar. Instead, Amelia briefly closes her eyes, resting her head against the cold, lifeless brick, trying not to think about the gaping abyss opening up within her.

_You fucking coward._

She squeezes her eyelids shut, feeling that deep, crushing sadness welling up inside – before shaking her head, taking a deep, steadying breath and opening her eyes again.

_Right._

She has to hurry a little to catch up to Sophia. By the time they’re inside, she’s all but pushed the incident out of her mind.

* * *

“So you’ve known Amelia for a long time, yeah?”

“I guess you could say that, yes,” the Doctor replies with a smile. He’s quickly taken quite a shine to Laura and her pixie-cut. She’s blunt and a little uncouth, yes, but clearly whip-sharp and not all that dissimilar from Amelia, always a plus in his books. In addition, Laura’s clearly been filled-in beforehand about him, because he barely has to introduce himself to her before they start talking about their mutual friend.

“She told us a few years back how you met,” Laura says, taking a sip of her drink.

That wipes the smile clean off his face. “Ah. Right.”

She places the glass down, studying him closely. “She hasn’t forgotten, you know.”

“I wouldn’t expect her to. It’s not something you forget very easily,” he adds quietly, averting his eyes.

“I guess a magic time machine is one way to make up for it,” she jokes, lightening the situation which the Doctor is rather grateful for. He has to correct one thing, though.

“Not magic,” he replies, “just very advanced technology, and a feat of engineering. Not easy to make, time machines.”

The lazy smile on Laura’s face falters slightly as she catches herself. “Very funny, but-”

“Ah, not funny! Being totally serious,” the Doctor interjects in earnest, sitting up a little straighter in her chair. “Pop around to the house one day and I’ll show you.” He decides not to mention the fact that the TARDIS is still quite firmly locked, despite his best efforts at persuading the old girl into opening up.

Laura raises an eyebrow. “I _am_ married, you know.”

He waves her off, the nuanced implication of her words flying straight over his head. “That hasn’t been a problem in the past,” he says with a dismissive air. “Bring Sophia along, I’m sure you’ll both love it.”

She stares at him. “We met ten minutes ago and you’re offering to take us for a spin in your time machine. What are you, nuts?”

The Doctor is a little perturbed by that – not because the question is particularly hard to answer. Indeed, it’s the exact opposite. “Well, what would _you_ do if you had a time machine?”

“Throw rocks at my ex’s house, I guess,” she says with a wry grin, a reply which rather brings the Doctor’s train of thought to a shuddering halt. Well, whatever answer he’d been expecting, _that_ hadn’t been it.

He’s mercifully excused of any need to respond by the timely return of Amelia and Sophia, the former shivering and rubbing her arms a little.

“Cold out?” Laura asks as Amelia resumes takes the seat between Laura and the Doctor, whilst Sophia sits on the opposite side of her wife.

“Nah, just shivering for fun, ya know?” Amelia jibes, her standard casual, confident smile firmly fixed onto her face – too firmly for the Doctor’s liking. Laura, carefully studying her wife’s expression, must have spotted something similar, because she opens her mouth to speak – only to be pre-emptively silenced by a fleeting yet unmistakeably stern look from Sophia.

_Hmm._

“Is there something wrong?” he asks. All three of them turn to glare at him with varying levels of suspicion and surprise.

“Why would there be something wrong?” Amelia asks, her voice cool and level. Her eyes have narrowed with a steely glint and her lips have thinned – whatever he’d just spotted, it’s gone now. Hidden behind layer upon layer of meticulously crafted defences that he can’t possibly breach, not directly at least.

He shrugs, aware that the moment’s now passed. “Just asking.”

She rolls her eyes, though she’s still wearing something of a frown. “Still worse than my aunt. I swear, you guys,” she says, addressing her two friends, “he’s been like this ever since he moved in.”

He knows she’s joking – but not _completely_ joking. “Only trying to help, Amelia. Only trying to help.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she mutters, passing him his orange juice and vodka which had just been placed on the counter in front of her, along with her own shot glass full of scotch whiskey. “Go on, have a try of that,” she tells him, before downing the shot glass in one go.

The Doctor eyes his glass suspiciously. He does love his orange juice, and the liquid certainly _looks_ like orange juice, with its normal bright and cheerful colour – but he’s aware that this isn’t _just_ orange juice, and his taste in drinks tends to differ somewhat from Amelia’s. “Sure this is okay?”

She snorts. “Of course it’s okay, it’s for ten-year-olds.” Both Sophia and Laura have a good laugh at that.

He gives it one more, narrow-eyed look before taking one deep, steadying breath and gulping down as big a mouthful as he can. For a moment all is well, and his mouth is filled with the pleasant sweetness of orange juice – until it isn’t.

In all honesty, he does well. He doesn’t spit any out, though the choking splutters he emits instantly send the three women into raucous peals of laughter. He rubs his nose insistently, trying to purge it of that horrid _burning_ sensation that had rushed up as the evil liquid had forced its way down his throat.

Unfortunately, his predicament seems lost on the others who continue to laugh themselves silly. In addition, Laura has taken it upon herself to smack him repeatedly on the back, as if trying to dislodge some blockage in his windpipe. It doesn’t help.

“What – what was _in_ that?” he manages after the coughing fit finally dissipates.

“Vodka, ya moron,” Amelia replies breathlessly, wiping tears of laughter out of her eyes. “Orange juice and vodka.”

* * *

By the time they get home that night, Amelia is well and truly exhausted. They’d had an absolutely wonderful evening, she and her closest friends drinking and laughing deep into the night, but it’d left her absolutely knackered. She’d even fallen asleep in the taxi, and it’d been up to the Doctor to gently shake her awake upon getting home. He’d also offered to help her up the stairs, but-

“I can walk, thanks,” she says sharply. He lets go at once and she makes her way to the door, though she has to hold onto the fence to keep her steady. Whiskey and fatigue, not a good combination even if she isn’t particularly drunk.

She fumbles with the keys for a second, dropping them with a less-than-quiet curse, before getting the door open and stepping into the waiting comfort of her house. The Doctor follows, closing the door behind him and hurrying off to the kitchen to put the kettle on.

“Tea, Amelia?”

She bites her lip, leaning a little on the doorway separating her cosy little kitchen from the entrance hall and the stairs leading up the bedrooms. “Um-”

“Actually, you know what,” he says before she can even think about formulating a coherent answer, “go up to bed, I’ll bring it to you once you’re there. You look absolutely out on your feet, Pond,” he says, running his eyes quickly over her slumped frame. Unexpectedly, his words stir something deep inside her, something hot and discomfiting – but even if he’s playing at dad, his logic is pretty undeniable and she is _so_ tired.

She drags herself upstairs, gives her teeth a half-hearted brush, pulls over the first – probably unwashed – nightdress she can find and collapses into bed. She closes her eyes and buries her head in the pillow, hoping that sleep will come _quickly_ for a change, without her resorting to the Ambien. The sleeping pills have been a massive help over the last few months, but she’s meant to be weaning herself off them now and using them only in case of emergencies.

She’s halfway there when there’s a knock on the door.

“Pond?”

Her eyes fly open and she sits up in a flash to see the Doctor standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the hallway light. He comes in unprompted, placing down a cup of tea and a plate full of jammy dodgers – _what else could it have been?_

“These’ll help you sleep,” he says. “Is there anything else you need?”

“I’ll be fine, thanks,” she says, a little more firmly than she expects.

“Sure?”

“Sure.”

He looks at her, studying her – and for a moment, their eyes lock. Her heart skips a beat, and she thinks, she _swears_ that she can see something in those ancient, enigmatic eyes of his – something unmistakeable, something indescribable, something _beautiful-_

He sighs, brushing a lock of flaming hair out of her face and cupping her cheek ever-so-gently, his thumb tracing miniscule patterns on her skin, before moving forward to kiss her softly on the forehead. Before Amelia can so much as even react to the gesture, he turns to leave, and it’s only when he’s halfway out of the doorway that she finds her voice again.

“Why are you being so nice to me?”

He turns around, his brow slightly furrowed. “Sorry, what?”

“You’ve been so nice to me. Ever since you started living here… the house, the car, all that stuff. Even now with the tea. Why?”

His brow furrows even further, and he just – he just looks at her with those incomprehensible eyes of his, as if she’s finally found a question beyond his capabilities to answer.

“When have I ever not been nice to you?”

She opens her mouth to give her most instinctive, natural reply – but stops herself. Whether it’s the whiskey in her veins, sheer exhaustion or some hidden trigger deep in her mind, she hears the voice of her best friend again – one who, unlike him, has never abandoned her.

_You told me you hated him._

She closes her mouth and stares at him, her mind teeming with a thousand contradictory thoughts and a thousand competing emotions which threaten to tear her to pieces. She stares at him, the raggedy Doctor, the man who’d given her such indescribable joy and pure anguish. The man who’d shown her the universe, and the man who’d wrecked her childhood. The man who’d spent the last four months caring for her after all but destroying her life-

“Amelia?”

His voice snaps her out of her train of thought, flinging her back to the present. She composes herself and settles back into bed.

“Shut the door, Doctor.”

He nods, says, “Don’t forget to drink that tea,” and closes the door behind him, leaving her in darkness. She doesn’t sleep for another four hours.

The cup remains untouched.


	10. Anger: IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No, she isn't angry. Not with so many people she loves and cares about in one place. At first she'd wondered if so many people could all fit in her less-than-grand house, especially when more and more people had shown up, but to her surprise it just makes the atmosphere pleasantly cosy and, well,  _warm._

"You're quiet."

Sophia raises her head from its resting place on the taxi window to look across to Laura. "What?"

"Don't 'what' me," Laura warns, though with a half-smile on her lips. "You're just… you know. Quiet."

"It's been a long day. I'm tired, that's all."

Laura eyes her closely. "Liar."

"Oi!" Sophia pouts slightly in mock offence, her eyes brightening a little. "There's just a lot on my mind at the moment," she says, resting her head back on the window and gazing at the flashing streetlights beyond.

Laura studies her carefully. Sophia had been oddly pensive and watchful all evening, especially since she and Amelia had come back from their little chat out the back of the bar. "Is it about Amelia? Is that who you're thinking about?"

Sophia closes her eyes momentarily. "Yeah. Not in a bad way, though."

"She seemed happy tonight," Laura murmurs, mostly to herself.

"She was," Sophia says regardless.

There'd just been something about their brilliant and erratic friend this evening – Amelia had had a certain vitality, a spark of life that hadn't been present in years. Whatever complications might surround her relationship with that enigmatic Doctor of hers, they clearly had a deep and personal bond.

So why, Laura wonders, has Sophia been so subdued all evening? True, Sophia is generally reserved by nature, but this…

Laura bites her lip. "When the two of you went out for that chat… what happened?"

There's a pause and a sigh. "It's fine," Sophia says eventually. "She's okay. We had a talk, that's all."

Laura swallows. She hasn't forgotten that sequence of meaningful  _looks_  the two of them had shared. "Soph…"

"I mean, you said it, right?" Sophia continues right across her wife with uncharacteristic firmness, almost as if trying to convince herself first of all. "She's enjoying life more than she has in years. That's all that matters."

* * *

Less than a month later, the twenty-sixth of April ticks around.

Amelia's birthday.

In years gone by, she'd let the occasion go mostly unmarked, maybe have some quiet drinks with her mates or something, but this year has not gone to trend and her birthday is no different. It could be much worse, though, as she soon realises when the Doctor relays his initial plans over breakfast.

She stares at him in astonishment, a spoonful of cereal laying limp in her hand. "You're crazy."

His face falls a little from its previous giddy excitement. "Is that a yes or a no?"

" _No,_  Doctor," she says firmly.

"But balloons and sparklers-"

"I'm turning  _thirty_ ," she cuts across him, in a tone of voice which is tailor-made to end the debate. "Not four."

She thinks she's turning thirty, anyway. She has a vague idea of how long she'd spent aboard the TARDIS, but it was hard to keep track of time aboard a time machine, and especially when timey-wimey crap started coming into play.

But according to him thirty is close enough, so that'll do her. Today isn't the sort of day to be worrying about minor details, anyway. Today is supposed to be a happy day.

Even if she has to go to work.

* * *

"You're kidding me."

There's a long, tired sigh from the man on the other side of the desk. "We don't really have much choice."

Amelia pinches her nose, leaning back in her chair. She does love her job at the Times, and her boss – Mark, the section editor – is a great bloke, but getting tangled in these sort of bureaucratic nightmares is always a sure-fire way to test her tolerance.

"If this is about my last column-"

"It's not," he interjects immediately, firmly enough that she doesn't doubt his sincerity. She's less than convinced, and evidently it shows, because he looks her straight in the eye and says, "Really. It was a great piece. You're a damn good journo, Amelia, especially for one without formal training."

She appreciates the compliment, even if the subtle condescension isn't ideal. Mark's been something of a champion for her over the last year or two, shielding her from the periodic waves of mass sackings which sweep through the newspaper. As such, she counts him as a good friend – but he is, first and foremost, her boss.

She'd appreciate even it more if he hadn't called her into his office to tell her that the bulk of her work has been put on indefinite hiatus _._ On her  _birthday,_  no less.

"It's just – I've already organised the whole thing!" she exclaims, gesturing her frustration with her hands. "Plane tickets, hotels, itinerary – the lot!"

"I know," he says with an air of resignation. "I've talked to them all already, we'll sort that all out for you."

"You know I've wanted to do Japan for ages, Mark," she says rather testily.

"I'm sorry, alright?" And he does sound sorry as he starts pacing about the office, but he also sounds more than a little impatient, like he has little time for any histrionics on her behalf. "But head office is squeezing us pretty hard and we simply can't afford to pay those expenses right now."

"My readers-"

"Will understand. You're on Twitter, right? Just say you'll be concentrating here at home for a while until I can smooth things over. Trust me, this is the best way."

Amelia isn't sure she agrees. "Yeah, a travel journalist who can't travel, most useful thing in the world," she drawls sarcastically.

"You know the alternatives," Mark replies firmly, eyeing her closely over the desk. "You're a smart lady, Amelia, you can work it out."

She sighs, knowing that she's lost the debate… assuming there was one in the first place, of course. "Fine," she grumbles. "So what am I meant to do around this joint now that I'm halfway out of a job?"

He glares at her. "Miss Pond-"

"Sorry, sorry," she says quickly, aware that she's more than crossed the line. "It's just… it's annoying, ya know?"

"I'm aware. I think International are a bit short on staff as well, maybe you could help them out for today. You've wanted that for a while, haven't you?"

In a way that's true, she  _has_  been hopeful of a shift towards being more of a proper foreign correspondent, covering actual hard-hitting stories across the world – that's not to say that she doesn't like writing her column and the puff pieces, but they don't scratch that deep itch within her that she'd discovered one day aboard a star whale. The point, though, is that she wants to be a  _correspondent_ , not some desk jockey.

But that's too idealistic, too  _big_  for her to be worrying about now. For the moment, she needs to worry about the small details, so she nods and puts on an assured smile.

"Good," Mark says. "Now, we obviously can't just  _cancel_  the column for next week, but you could recycle one of your old blog pieces. I'm sure people will understand," he says, his gaze having drifted down to paperwork on his desk. That's as sure a sign as any that she's being dismissed.

"Alright. I'll do my best," she says half-heartedly, already well-aware that her birthday is decidedly  _not_  going to plan. "I'll be at my desk if you need me."

She turns to leave, and is halfway out the door when Mark's voice stops her.

"Oh, and Amelia?"

She turns a little to meet his eye. He's smiling at her. "Yeah?"

"Happy birthday. Sorry I couldn't make it a better one."

To her surprise, she smiles back. "Cheers."

Maybe it's the thought that counts.

* * *

The rest of her work day is quiet. For the most part she spends it shuffling emails with the blokes in International two floors above her, as they rope her in to do research on the culture of Brazil – a place where she's been three times, including one in the future, so she doesn't have to work too hard to come up with the goods. Decidedly uninspiring work, but it's at least work and she's getting paid for it. Plus, she has a lovely lunch with a few of her favourite colleagues, including one whom she suspects has half an eye for her.

All in all, it's a normal day. Not brilliant, but normal, and she likes it that way. Normal is safe, stable,  _predictable._  It's her comfort zone.

She checks out at five o'clock sharp – no point hanging around without a trip to prepare for – and catches the tube home. The train is on time, she gets a comfortable seat on the carriage, puts her earphones in, and is more or less left in peace for the duration of the journey.

All very  _normal._

She arrives home at a quarter to six, checks the mail out of habit – there's nothing there – and heads to the door, taking a moment to fiddle with her keys before pushing the door open-

" _Surprise!"_

It's a miracle she doesn't faint out of shock.

* * *

In all honesty, she should have expected this: a surprise birthday party is  _exactly_  the sort of stunt the Doctor likes to pull. In her defence, however, she hasn't had one in at least twenty years, so it's not something she's used to.

And it's not just her and the Doctor messing around at home, either, as fifteen of her closest friends and family end up coming over. Indeed, this fact makes Amelia immediately suspicious that he's had some extra help. Most of her friends aren't even aware of the Doctor's existence, after all, so how could he have roped them all in on his little plan?

"Well…" Sophia says slowly, clearing her throat in a laughably fake manner. "I guess he managed somehow."

Sophia is good at many things, but coming up with convincing stories is decidedly not one of them. Amelia glares at her. " _Soph…_ "

"Okay, Laura helped him out a bit," Sophia admits with a sheepish smile. "But he called us."

She nods, understanding – until a subtle point pops up in her mind. "Wait – he has your number?"

A very faint smile. "I think  _you_ have our number."

It hits. " _Right._ "

She looks across to the other side of the room, where the Doctor and Laura appear to be deep in conversation. She decides then and there to have a word with him later; she's not a fan of anyone rummaging through something as private and personal as her phone, and he is no exception to that.

Amelia doesn't have it in her to be remotely angry or displeased, though. She's more likely to be laughing at the absurd decorations the Doctor has insisted on throwing up all over the place, or at the ridiculous party hats he keeps trying to make her wear. It's like she's a child all over again – which, to her surprise, she doesn't really mind in the slightest.

No, she isn't angry. Not with so many people she loves and cares about in one place. At first she'd wondered if so many people could all fit in her less-than-grand house, especially when more and more people had shown up, but to her surprise it just makes the atmosphere pleasantly cosy and, well,  _warm._

"I'm happy for you," Sophia says softly, breaking Amelia out of her train of thought.

"Hm?"

"Oh, it's nothing," Sophia says. "It's just nice to see you smiling again."

Can't argue with that.

* * *

In the end, she doesn't remember much from the party. It all blurs together, becoming one great big smear of warmth and laughter across her memory. She recalls a few things, like the Doctor leading several choruses of  _happy birthday_ whilst standing on the couch, like his attempt at a home-made cake which goes wonderfully awry, and like the present he gives her, right at the end of the night when people are beginning to drift off home.

Superficially, it's a simple gift – just a little wooden music box, with deep blue felt and a red-haired ballerina inside – but she'd been immediately struck dumb, her fingers trembling as she watched the little figuring slowly twirl around.

"I mean – it's not much, I know," he'd said nervously, apparently aware of both her lack of response and the sudden silence that had filled the room. "I just found it at an old antique shop the other day and thought you might like it-"

"Oh, shut up," she'd said right across him, snapping the box shut before throwing herself into the tightest of embraces.

Anyway. While it had been a wonderful night, it had only been one night. The next day is back to normal: she wakes up with a hangover, finishes off her recycled column to send off to Mark, goes grocery shopping, and comes home to a house surrounded by fire trucks.

She asks some of the firemen what the hell had happened, but they just shrug and tell her to direct her queries to her husband.

"I don't have a-" she begins, before her brain catches up with her mouth. "Right."

She finds the Doctor waiting patiently in the sitting room, his back hunched and his hands pressed between his knees. It rather reminds her of a nine-year-old boy preparing for a well-deserved scolding from his mother. Or a nine-year-old girl, in her own case, awaiting similar from her aunt.

For her part, she simply stands in front of him, crosses her arms, and waits.

"I – erm – I was just trying something, you see," he immediately gabbles, springing up and throwing his arms about in wild, apologetic gestures. She'd laugh, except for the fact that he's covered in soot and she can still see firemen filing in and out of the kitchen door. "Um, experimenting, if you will."

"Experimenting."

"With the oven," he explains – or attempts to, anyway, adding a shrug for effect. "Was attempting to get an extra twelve percent efficiency out of the heating unit, but something must have went a bit… funny."

There's a brief silence while she glares at him and he decides that his own hands are suddenly of incredible interest.

"And so…" she eventually says, trying her best not to sound  _too_  irritated with him.

"So the oven sort of, erm, exploded," he says meekly. "I'll make it better, I promise."

She lets out a half-suppressed sigh, trying her best to contain her rapidly cresting stress levels. It's the Doctor, after all. Things like this are to be expected.

"Fine. But what were you  _actually_  doing?" The Doctor is unpredictable and random, but not completely irrational. There must've been a reason he was so interested in the oven.

To her surprise, he looks down at his hands, wringing them nervously. "I was, erm, going to bake you some cupcakes for when you got home," he mumbles.

Her eyes widen, her expression softening as they do so. "Really?"

"Really," he says, looking back up at her. "Though not any more, I guess."

All in all, it's just another ordinary day in the life of Amelia and the Doctor.

* * *

Two weeks after the  _oven incident_ , with its associated weekend spent repairing the kitchen, it's raining. Not raining very heavily, mind, but it is raining, as demonstrated by the soft pitter-patter of the raindrops against the roof.

She's currently very aware of this sound, and also aware that it's been raining on and off for the last two hours, as it's the only point of interest in her otherwise completely dark, completely silent bedroom.

She rolls over with a sigh, tugging the blankets up above her chest and takes a glance at her bedside clock.  _Two a.m.… shit._

She's well acquainted with two o'clock in the night, of course. During her late teens, two o'clock would be about the time the parties started to die down – they could have gone on longer, but even that sort of hour ran the risk of seriously scandalising the villagers who didn't hold with that sort of thing.  _She_  didn't care about that, of course, but others did.

Of course, her two-a.m.-experiences aren't just limited to parties, goodness no.

Her insomnia is more or less life-long, but it had only seriously kicked in roughly five years ago now – not coincidentally, right about the time her relationship with Rory had…

Yeah.

She screws her eyes shut – why they were open, she has no idea – and tries to clear her mind. This is why she  _hates_  not being able to fall asleep, even more than the fatigue that inevitably sets in the next day. Here, awake in bed, with nothing to do but stare at the ceiling and listen to the rain, her brain takes her to exactly those places she would much rather avoid.

Like many things in her life, though, it's cyclical. Some months she'll get by with something approaching a reasonable sleeping pattern, other times she simply isn't capable of functioning without assistance from sleeping pills. It's exhausting, but adaptability is a strength of hers and she's long since learned how to adjust.

Still, it's not much fun – as confirmed by the sight of the alarm clock reading 2:24am when her eyelids flutter open again.

_Oh, god damn it._

She doesn't want to resort to the pills. She's been putting them off for weeks now, trying desperately to just ride out the low of the cycle without having to take the damn things. She's thankful for them, of course, she has no idea where she'd be without access to them, but she is  _not_  a fan of how they make her feel upon waking up.

She curls up tighter into bed and tries to force unconsciousness upon herself using every method she knows – though they all fail, of course. They always do.

The next time she glimpses the alarm clock, it's just ticked over to three.

_Fuck._

She sighs, and after another minute of listening to the lightly falling rain, she decides to clamber her way out of bed and get a drink, maybe go to the bathroom –  _something._

As she limps down the hallway, rubbing her throbbing temples, she notices that the door to one of the rooms is ajar, and a light is on inside. It takes her several fatigue-stretched seconds for her to realise that it's the Doctor's room, which is a surprise. Not that he's awake, of course – the moron never seems to sleep – but that he's not out and about, having late-night adventures out in Chelsea or somewhere.

Well, that probably just shows how late it is – and it  _is_  raining, which probably makes adventures just a smidge less appealing even to him. She bites her lip, staring at the door for a second… before pushing her way inside. He's sitting in bed with his lower body covered in blankets, his attire the same as ever except for the tweed. The light, it turns out, is a reading lamp illuminating a thick yellow book of some description.

"Doctor?"

He starts, jolted out of his little bubble by her voice, before putting the book down to stare at her. "Pond. It's rather late for you to be up."

She ignores his point, shuts the door behind her and plops herself down on the edge of his bed. "What are you reading?"

"The book? Oh, just a 1982 Wisden Almanack," he replies.

"Seriously?"

"Serious as ever." He eyes her closely. "Is there something wrong?"

"No, no," she says quickly. "Just… can't sleep, ya know?"

"Indeed." He pauses for a moment, continuing to read her like she's the book he'd just put down, before shifting right over to the corner and opening up the blankets.

She stares at him for a moment, baffled – before it hits her exactly what he's doing. "Wait, I didn't-"

"Well, why else would you have come here?" he asks, as if it's the most obvious question in the world.

"I…" Her voice falls away, though, as she soon realises that she doesn't have an adequate answer. She bites her lip and fiddles with the sheets a little before letting out an exhausted sigh. "Fine."

The bed is only designed for one, so it's a squeeze to fit both their long, gangly bodies beneath the blankets, but eventually they manage. Her back is pressed up against his chest, and she suspects that she's squashing him against the wall-

"No, no, it's fine," he reassures her quickly when she airs her concerns. "Perfectly comfy, me. How about you?"

"I'm good." Better than good, in fact, as she can feel his face nuzzling her hair, his arm draped around her midriff. She places her arm across his, securing his hold on her. It's as comfortable as she's been in ages. "Have you done this before?"

"Yes," he murmurs, his lips all but brushing her ear, "but not for a long time."

She closes her hand around his arm, tightening her grip. "Neither," she replies softly.

He's surprised by that, she can tell by the way his body stiffens. "But you and Rory-" he begins, before cutting himself off as his brain catches up to his mouth.

But it doesn't matter, she's not so easily offended. "Cuddling in bed," she says slowly, searching for the right words, "just wasn't our thing."

And that's true, it wasn't. There was the odd post-sex cuddle, of course, and maybe when they needed a little late-night comfort, but that was rare.

"And before that?" She can hear the curiosity in his voice, so innocent and simple that she can't help but open up.

"A little," she says, her voice barely above a whisper. "Sometimes with Mum. Never with Aunt Sharon."

There's a long silence, a pause as she waits for his response – which she gets in the form of a sigh, his lips pressing briefly into her hair. "Sweet dreams, Pond," he whispers, reaching over to turn off the light before letting her settle into him. "I'll be here if you need me."

She's asleep in less than a minute, and she dreams with a smile on her face.

* * *

The Doctor wakes first.

He always does, of course. He only needs two hours a day, after all, and he makes sure to keep his sleep time to the required minimum. Every second spent asleep is a second not moving, not  _doing,_  and he can't really abide wasting any more time than absolutely necessary.

He opens his eyes, his vision adjusting rapidly to the still-darkened room around him. There's a little light creeping in through the curtains above him, but no more than a whisper of the incoming day – it surely can't be earlier than five thirty in the morning.

He smiles, settling back into bed and listening to the rhythmic sounds of gentle breathing – though not his breathing.

It's nice, to be honest. He's known Amelia for so long and shared so much with her, but to his knowledge this is the first time they'd ever slept together. And, well… it's  _nice._

She's rolled over in her sleep so her head is resting on his shoulder, silken hair tickling the bottom of his chin. For a few minutes it's all he knows, the sweet, intoxicating fragrance filling his senses, the way her hair seemed to shine even in the near-darkness, its softness as he absent-mindedly twirls a few locks about his fingers.

Maybe he should do this  _peaceful moment_  thing more often, he muses to himself, if this is the result.

Physically, it's about as close as he's gotten to her since he'd come back to her… a realisation which immediately gives him an idea.

Carefully, so as to not disturb her, he reaches across to the bedside table, where he'd placed the book he'd been reading, a spatio-temporal interferometer he'd been building out of a hairdryer and, of course, the sonic screwdriver. After a little blind searching with his hand in the dark, he manages to close his fingers around the device – only to freeze, as Amelia stirs next to him.

 _Oops._  Probably best that she isn't awake for this…

But no, her little murmurs aren't a sign of anything but the most blissful of sleeps. He smiles to himself as she shifts against him, letting out a small chuckle into her hair – before lifting the screwdriver and running it over her arms in one smooth movement.

He flicks it up to his eyes and examines the reading, his lips thinning, his brow creasing as he does so. The scan hasn't told him much – it's just a medical, so it wasn't ever going to – but they do confirm his first suspicion: the cuts on her forearms have been present for a quite a while now.

He'd been looking for the opportunity to find this out for well over a month, ever since that evening where he'd found out about her injuries. At first, he hadn't thought that much of it – sure, it had  _looked_  bad, but it hadn't seemed to trouble her in any way.

Except, of course, when it had.

* * *

Before this morning, all he'd done was ask her about it. Not directly, of course, as that isn't really their style, but he'd simply tried to find out what had gone wrong. He hadn't even been particularly pokey or nosey about it, he'd just asked if, well, was there anything  _physically_  wrong with her that he should know about?

"What?" she'd hissed when he'd first brought it up, giving him an astonished glare over the jumble of electronic wiring and ominous flashing lights separating them. "We're six minutes away from nuclear armageddon and you're asking me  _that?!_ "

"I'm just curious, that's-"

"Nuclear armageddon, Doctor!"

Alright, so his timing may have been a  _little_  off, but they'd defused the bomb with a comfortable twenty seconds to spare anyway and besides, something tells him that isn't the point.

More importantly, something tells him that the nature of her answer isn't  _actually_  a result of the fact they'd been trying to avert a nuclear catastrophe. Something tells him that she'd have given that sort of answer anyway.

Quite simply, she doesn't want him to know.

He doesn't care about the scars themselves. They'd both picked up plenty of bumps and bruises in their merry jaunts across the universe – part of the job description – but nothing permanent as far as he knows. Nothing that hadn't righted itself in short order.

Maybe he shouldn't worry so much; a couple of cuts is almost trivial on the grand scheme of thing and while they may stick around, they're only cuts and they should heal with time.

So why are they such a problem, then? They look bad, sure, and they'd worried him sick at first, but she's doing very well at hiding them… far, far too well.

No.

He has to find out, which means he has to talk to someone. Someone he trusts, someone with the right knowledge and someone he can reach without having to time-travel…

Fortunately, he knows just the man.

* * *

"Amelia."

Silence.

"Amelia, wake up." There's a little shifting and a near-inaudible mumble, but other than that, still nothing. But the Doctor persists.

"Come on, Pond," he says, now shaking her gently by the shoulders. "Time to rise and shine."

At this, Amelia finally wakes with a full-on groan and stretch as she slowly pushes herself up to a sitting position, shaking a curtain of untamed ginger hair away from her eyes.

"What time s'it?" she asks, blinking sleep from her still-bleary eyes.

"A quarter past eight," he says.

There's a momentary pause, where she simply stares at him, and then – "Shit," she blurts, her face filling with sudden horror. "Oh, fuck," she curses again, staggering to her feet and brushing past him before he can so much as berate her for her language.

A few seconds later, he's on the opposite side of her bedroom door, listening patiently to her list of things he needs to do in the next five minutes or, apparently, she's going to be "screwed". It's not an especially long list – he just needs to make her some breakfast, make her a coffee and call a cab – but she seems awfully stressed regardless.

"Can't you just show up a few minutes late or so? I'm sure they won't mind."

"No!" she immediately shouts from beyond the door, clearly mortified at the idea given her tone of voice. "I try to be on time for meetings, Doctor, unlike  _some_  people, ya know?"

"I was on time last week to that concert thing!" he retorts, deflecting the deeper jibe hidden beneath.

She snorts. "Yeah, just. By, like, five seconds."

"Five seconds is loads of time, you can do plenty in five seconds. And besides, I have my own meeting today too," he says, injecting a note of somewhat childish pride into his voice, "and I'll bet you twenty quid I'm on time for that."

The door opens, revealing Amelia in a sleek grey suit, a clean white blouse, a matching skirt and with curiosity in her eyes. "Really? Who with?"

"Oh… um, just an old friend," he says with an off-hand gesture.

That's probably not the answer she was expecting – or hoping for. "An old friend?"

"Just a guy I used to know." With luck, that'll be enough to satisfy her, as he'd really rather not get into specifics.

Fortunately, it is enough. "Ah, right," she says, her shoulders relaxing and a smile working its way to her face. "I thought you had some hot date or something."

" _Amelia!_ "

"Oh, shut up and get me my cab." She pushes past him with a playful jab to his shoulder and a smile. He pouts and makes a face, but internally he's thankfully that the short conversation hadn't gone down the potentially awkward and troublesome path it had been heading towards.

Once upon a time he wouldn't have thought twice before telling Amelia that he's going off to find her now ex-husband, but this situation isn't quite so simple. Nothing about this is.


	11. Anger: V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But it’s not as if she has anything to hide, does she? She hasn’t been cooped up and alone, endlessly daydreaming about better days past and future, nor has she been wilfully giving up her mind and body to anyone who cares to have it. Those days are gone, washed away by a wave of laughter and excitement, nonsensical adventures through the dark alleyways of London and quiet evenings by the telly, her head resting on his shoulder…

“So, how have you been doing?”

“Fine.”

There’s a little pause, before the therapist gives a small smile. “Now, where have we heard that before, Amelia?”

She cringes – the word had fallen out of her mouth before she had done so much as think. Old habits die hard, especially ones that are twenty years old. “I mean it this time, though,” she says, perhaps a little more defensively than she needs to.

“What makes you say that?” he asks gently.

She opens her mouth. Hesitates. “Well…”  _Shit._  She hasn’t thought this through. “I’m sleeping a bit more,” she says quickly, knowing that that’s broadly true with the occasional exception – such as last night. “And going out more and all that sort of thing.”

“And work?”

“Is alright,” she says. She adds a small shrug for effect.

“Is that a good ‘alright’ or a bad ‘alright’?”

She blinks, somewhat thrown –  _alright_  means exactly that, doesn’t it?

There’s not much more she can say about it, really. She’s still in that frustrating place where no one at work can seem to find a consistent use for her talents, but at least she’s still collecting a salary. So long as she’s getting paid she can’t complain  _too_  loudly.

“I mean… it’s okay. It keeps me busy, ya know?”  _Working on other people’s stories,_  she neglects to add. Even then, though, she’d only just been given the okay this morning to take an hour off so she could get to this very appointment. “I’ve had this job for two years now, I’m not about to lose it.”

He studies her carefully, behind those academic glasses and imperturbable demeanour of his, before jotting down a few notes and smiling.

“That’s nice to hear. So long as you maintain a healthy balance, keeping yourself occupied with something you enjoy is exactly what you need.” He glances back up at her. “And what about your social life, and your love life? No significant others?”

She frowns. “I don’t-” She stops herself just before the words  _need anyone_  slip out – whilst true, experience has taught her that saying things like that during a therapy session has consequences. “I’m doing pretty well on my own. Have done for ages now.”

“But there must be  _someone_  new in your life these days. Otherwise you’d be shutting yourself off from the world, no? And we’ve talked about that.”

There’s a brief, instinctive stab of annoyance which almost shows on her face, but she catches herself just in time. It’s a deeply personal point, but one whose logic she understands; by now she’s old enough and wise enough to know that the equilibrium she’s found in the last few years could disappear just like  _that._  She needs to be vigilant, and keep tabs on every little thing that goes on in her life.

But it’s not as if she has anything to hide, does she? She hasn’t been cooped up and alone, endlessly daydreaming about better days past and future, nor has she been wilfully giving up her mind and body to anyone who cares to have it. Those days are gone, washed away by a wave of laughter and excitement, nonsensical adventures through the dark alleyways of London and quiet evenings by the telly, her head resting on his shoulder…

“Well… okay. Yes. There is.”

He smiles warmly. “Someone new?”

Despite herself, she returns it. “Not exactly.”

* * *

It had taken him a little while, but that afternoon the Doctor is in the waiting room of a bustling hospital, having spent most of the day locating his quarry. It hadn’t been particularly difficult – all he’d had to do was browse a phonebook, call about half a dozen hospitals, clear out an infestation of vampire bugs along the way, that sort of thing – but it’d been tedious.

Not for the first time, he curses the slowness of ordinary travel – fine, he can understand the TARDIS stopping him running off into the wild temporal yonder, but what’s wrong with a shortcut here and there?

Regardless, he’s here now and – infuriatingly – waiting. Though the magazines are a nice way to pass the time… so many pretty pictures. Some of them are even real.

As he does so, he listens in on the general murmur of humanity that surrounds him: the worried mother fretting about her child, the frail elderly man making his way through with quiet dignity, the long-suffering patient supported by family…

“Doctor?”

He looks up and there in his nurses’ scrubs, with that nose and that oh-so-familiar look of mild surprise, is Rory.

“Rory! Rory the Roman!” Without further ado, the Doctor leaps up and gives Rory crushing bear-hug, which out of surprise is only half-heartedly returned. “It’s been too long, hasn’t it? Seven years for you, a bit longer for me – far too long in anyone’s language unless you’re a-”

“Alright, Doctor, I get the message,” Rory cuts him off, carefully disentangling himself from the over-excited Time Lord. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, you know,” the Doctor says, gesturing vaguely in his usual idiosyncratic way. “Just seeing the sighs. Checking things out. Catching up – that’s the phrase, isn’t it?”

Rory nods, but wrings his hands a little apprehensively. “Um – I’m a bit busy now, my shift doesn’t end for an hour-”

“Most excellent!” The Doctor claps his hands together, drawing a mixture of alarmed and astonished stares from those around him, which he duly ignores. “I’ll see you at that place down the road with the nachos in an hour, yes?”

“Um-”

“Great, see you there!”

* * *

Laura loves this place.

Nestled on an open boulevard opposite a tree-lined park, the café has just the right blend of a relaxed, laid-back air and enough liveliness to remain vibrant. Not only that, it’s close enough to work that she can drop by daily, she knows the staff personally and the food is bloody outstanding.

It’s pretty much her favourite place to get lunch unless one of her work colleagues forcibly drags her elsewhere – and, generally speaking, that doesn’t happen. More the other way around as is the case today, as she sips a coffee and not-so-patiently waits for an old friend who’s just moved to her department to-

“Ah, there you are! I was starting to wonder if you’d gotten lost,” the Doctor’s voice suddenly booms out from very close by.

Laura turns around, startled and wondering how on earth he’d managed to find her – only to find him seated at a nearby table, his back turned to her as he offers a seat to someone else. Someone Laura knows.

Her mouth falls slightly agape, and she only half-heartedly returns the small wave Rory gives her – but he doesn’t seem to mind. If anything, he looks a little embarrassed, even nervous to be here. Not that he ever looks anything but slightly awkward, mind.

She briefly considers barging in and saying hello, but the Doctor seems completely oblivious to her presence just a few yards away and the two men are already deep in conversation.

_Whatever_. From the sound of the conversation just behind her, they know each other and they haven’t seen each other in years, so this is just your run-of-the-mill catch-up session from the sound of things. Though she isn’t sure whether Amelia would be so impressed with the idea of the Doctor talking to her ex-husband-

“What happened? Between you and Amy.”

She freezes at the Doctor’s words behind her back.  _Did he just ask-_

Rory lets out a decidedly bitter laugh. “You really want to know? I mean, she kicked me out. What more do you want?”

“She hasn’t really talked about it-” the Doctor begins, an audible note of frustration creeping into his voice

“Ha. I’ll bet she hasn’t.” Another bitter laugh – okay, Laura officially does not like where this conversation is headed. There’s a long pause, which she just  _knows_  that Rory is using to consider his options.

He sighs. “What do you want to know?”

_Uh oh._

She puts down her cup and starts to listen properly.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, Laura decides to stop listening and starts talking. Though it’s hardly a surprise who she talks to.

“Sophia Fairbright speaking,” a serene and professional voice answers after a few rings.

“Hey Soph, got a moment?”

“Oh – sure, darling.” Sophia sounds a bit thrown, but the day she  _doesn’t_  make time for Laura – or at least promise to later on in the afternoon – will be the day they die. Or divorce. “Lucky I’m on break. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing wrong, just wanted to get your opinion on… on something.”

“Go ahead.”

“So Amelia keeps the Doctor on a pretty tight leash, yeah?”

There’s a short silence while Sophia mulls it over on the other end of the line. “I suppose you could say that. They do pretty much everything together these days.” And it’s true: aside from work, Amelia is so rarely seen without her ‘room-mate’ in tow that she’s spending much of her time batting off questions about how long the two of them had been dating – and not all of those are in jest.

“Yeah, lovesick kids they are. But I mean, even when she’s at work he doesn’t just go around and do his own thing, right?”

Sophia hums thoughtfully. “I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him much, not as much as you have.”

“Yeah, which is why I’m asking.” Laura does like the Doctor – more than Sophia does, she suspects – but she gets the feeling that his motivations aren’t easily guessed even by those in the know. And besides, if her instincts regarding the scene in front of her are on-base, then she needs a second opinion.

“I’m not sure… I mean, Amelia says that he gets bored without her, so I guess he wouldn’t just go and do his own thing unless she let him or asked him to,” Sophia says, before stopping for a moment. Yes, she’s the kindest and most caring woman Laura knows, but also the shrewdest, and this moment is no exception. “You’re looking at him right now, aren’t you?”

“Yep.”

“So what exactly is he doing?”

“Talking to Rory,” Laura replies, turning to glance at the harrowed conversation between the Doctor and Amelia’s ex-husband still going less than twenty feet away. “On his own, over a plate of nachos.”

It takes a few seconds for Sophia processes the implications of her words, but the consequences are obvious enough.

“Shit,” Sophia eventually murmurs, a little curse made as much to herself as anyone else.

“Yeah,” Laura affirms quietly. Evidently, Sophia has leapt to exactly the same conclusion as herself – and it’s not a good one. “Either she’s put him up to this, or Rory’s trying to get back with her, or-”

“-the Doctor’s playing her for a fool. I’m hoping it’s the first one,” Sophia adds.

“Which says a lot,” Laura says.

“Yeah,” Sophia replies grimly. “But something tells me that it isn’t.”

“Ray of sunshine, huh?”

“I don’t trust him, Laura – and neither should you.”

“We’ll see.” She can see Sophia’s point but, well, she  _likes_  the man and it’s not her style to go in assuming such an enormous breach of faith on his behalf. “Anyway, even assuming Rory’s trying to get back to her, it doesn’t mean that she doesn’t know about this.”

“She will go ballistic if she doesn’t know and she finds out. You know that as well as I do.” It’s astonishing, really – what was once a beautiful and healthy marriage is now such a poisoned relationship that the mere hint of restarting it is enough to set Amelia off. The Fairbrights know part of the reason why, but only part.

“Yeah, she’ll reckon the Doctor’s trying to put them together again. But surely he can’t be  _that_  much of a dick,” Laura says, more in hope than honest expectation. “So what do you reckon I should do?” Laura isn’t exactly lacking in decisiveness or opinions, but sometimes her interventions have all the subtlety of a car crashing into a sitting room. In such delicate circumstances, a more careful touch might be a better fit.

“What are they talking about?” Sophia asks briskly, business-like. “Did you manage to catch any of it?”

Laura opens her mouth – but pauses. Now that it’s come to this, the trigger for this entire call in the first place is more than a little difficult to vocalise. It’s not something easily discussed, after all, not least because it’s not strictly  _their_  secret.

“Laura…” Sophia intones, her voice thick with trepidation.

Laura tells her.

There’s a long, long silence.

“Oh, shit.” Which, to be fair, is a pretty reasonable response. “Call her. Now.”

* * *

Amelia’s taking the elevator up to her work floor when Laura’s call arrives.

She takes it immediately. “Yeah?”

“Are you and Rory speaking again?” Laura’s opening is, as usual, without any sort of preamble, but even Amelia is surprised at how brusque she is. Not to mention what she’s actually asking.

“What–” she splutters, completely thrown by the question. “No!”

“Sure?”

“Of course I’m sure! I haven’t spoken to him in… god, five years?”

They’d exchanged a perfunctory word at the Fairbrights’ wedding, but no more than was required for politeness. Worse still Sophia, in a completely well-intentioned but horribly misguided scheme, had later tried to arrange a ‘truce’ between them, and break the frigid tension that existed between the pair – if they couldn’t get back together, she reasoned, at least they break the habit of  _hating_  each other so obviously when they were in sight.

Unfortunately, the only thing that had broken was several of Amelia’s dishes, as she and Rory had ended up in a shouting match across twenty feet with insults being tossed about like confetti. Since then, they’ve mutually agreed that the best policy is to ignore the other’s general existence on the off-chance that they’re forced to be near each other, usually at parties and the like. Everyone who’s still friends with both of them thinks they’re both being childish, but Amelia knows it’s for the best.

Burned bridges ought to be left that way.

As the elevator rises, she continues to assure Laura that no, Rory has  _not_  contacted her in any shape or form and no, she would not be remotely interested in talking to him if he tried. She glances at the other two occupants of the elevator, many of whom are already staring at her with undisguised disapproval at having such a loud conversation in an enclosed space. She doesn’t give a damn what they think, but it’s probably best she sorts this out before heading back to her desk, so she gets out at the next floor anyway and finds an empty room, shutting the door behind her.

Meanwhile, Laura is still needling away, having – again – gotten the madcap idea that Amelia and the Doctor must be dating.

“How many times–” she begins after Laura asks her  _again_  if there’s anything going on, her frustration almost getting the better of her. “Look, I’m not seeing  _anyone_  and I’m not about to. But it doesn’t make any difference because Rory and I are  _done_. We’ve been done for years and we’re not about to get back together.  _Ever,_ ” she adds, with as much emphasis as she can muster without raising her voice. “Besides, doesn’t he have a family and that stuff?”

There’s a deep and very uncharacteristic pause, as if Laura is choosing her words with uncommon care. “Yeah, about that. He and Emily split a while back.”

Amelia had been pacing restlessly about the table, but now she stops as Laura’s words sink in. “What? You mean – they divorced?”

“Not quite. They’ve got kids, remember?”

“Oh.” She feels a pang of sympathy, much to her own surprise. Presumably that’s for Emily, who she’s met several times and honestly doesn’t mind, awkward ex-wife dynamics aside. But it’s nothing to do with her so suppresses any further curiosities she might have – after all, she’s supposed to  _not care_  about him, isn’t she? “Well, good luck to them. Where do I come in?”

“I thought they were just taking a break, but then I wondered if he might be trying to get back with you.” Laura sounds exasperated, like there’s something totally obvious that Amelia isn’t seeing – or doesn’t know about.

“And why’d you think that?”

Now she’s sighing audibly. “Well, why else would he have met up with your Doctor friend for a chat? I mean, given that the two of you are living together but you  _insist_  that there’s nothing going on…”

Oh.

_Oh._

“Did you hear what they were talking about?” She does her best to keep her voice light and steady, but something dark, nameless and quite frightening has materialised deep inside her, and it’s impossible to completely suppress.

Laura hasn’t missed it, as her own voice is filled with sudden alarm when she asks, “Wait, didn’t you know-”

“Answer the question, Laura.”

“Well – I mean, I was just having lunch nearby, but I heard them talking and – yeah. They were talking about you, and the last few years…”

“ _What did they talk about?_ ”

There’s a hesitation, an audible intake of breath. Amelia waits, and waits, and then-

“Everything.”

Amelia’s never really believed in those lightbulb moments, that stark millisecond of epiphany – but now, right now, it’s all coming together, all those little threads and half-buried concerns, all those little fears she’d dismissed as overly paranoid and the product of a not-quite-healthy mind, they’re all converging on a single, crystalline moment of truth.

The non-stop touchy-feely behaviour. The over-the-top curiosity about her doings over the past few years. The almost obsessive interest in her well-being. Even last night… oh, it all makes sense.

_I won’t interfere_ , he’d said.  _I’ll let you live your own life without trying to meddle_ , he’d said.  _I promise._

Him and his little plans.

“Amelia?”

She hangs up, leaves the room and exits the building without saying another word.

* * *

Sophia picks up after a single ring.

“How’d it go?” she asks immediately, business-like, without any of her usual pleasantries or affectations – she must be particularly high-strung.

“Badly,” Laura replies grimly. She’d expected a bad response, she’d expected Amelia to be pissed off – but the way she’d hung up, without a word? And the way she’d talked at the end… that hadn’t been the voice of the unpredictable but endlessly compassionate woman Laura has known since high school.

Somehow, invisibly and with unfathomable speed, this has escalated in a way she can’t really comprehend. She sighs, rubbing her temples. “She hung up on me without saying a thing. I mean, I asked her if anything was going on, she said no, I told her about what I saw and she just hung up.”

For a rare moment, Sophia’s control breaks – which, in its own way, is doubly unnerving. “Shit!” she exclaims, loud enough that Laura has to briefly hold the phone away from her ear, but Sophia soon regains command over her emotions. “Alright, alright, that doesn’t necessarily mean… right. Did you ask if she knew beforehand-”

“Yeah. She didn’t. And,” Laura says before hesitating, pre-emptively flinching at about what she’s about to say, “She only hung up after I told her.”

There’s an audible and anguished groan on the other end.

“What’s she going to do now?” Laura presses, now departing her table so she can pay her bill and get on the move. Maybe if she can catch Amelia on the way home… “Where’s she going?”

“I don’t know. I  _don’t know._ ” Sophia lets out a sigh. “If I knew I’d say, but no really knows exactly what makes Amelia tick – except for one person, maybe, and I wouldn’t want to be him right now.”

“Why?” Laura’s still thrown by how panicked Sophia sounds, how  _dangerous_  Amelia had seemed right at the end of their truncated conversation. “What could-”

“Don’t you get it? Laura, she’s just been led to believe that the happiest period of her life in years has been built on a lie, while her  _friend_  lies and mucks around with her life behind her back.” Sophia pauses, letting the words sink in. “I think you were right – she probably thinks he’s trying to put Rory and her back together. How do you think she’ll take that?”

* * *

If the trip to find Rory was tedious, the trip home is just absurd.

According to Amelia, it should only take him an hour at most to get back home from the city, assuming he doesn’t take ridiculous detours or get stuck along the way – which, of course, it what happens.

It’s a long and convoluted story, involving no end of mishaps and distractions, but thankfully he’s home by four o’clock. He scuttles inside beneath the rapidly closing weather, which would have made the journey home that slight bit more uncomfortable.

More importantly, he’s home before Amelia, which is probably more important than usual today; it’s best that she doesn’t know about the lunchtime meeting he’d had. He’ll tell her if she asks, but in his judgment it’s best to keep it to himself otherwise. It’s not like it had exactly gone to plan – whatever had driven the Amy and Rory apart, Rory’s lingering bitterness is a sign that this is not a divide that will be easily healed.

But it has to. Somehow, it has to, for Amelia’s sake alone. Really, today was nothing more than the confirmation of his suspicions – somehow, somewhere, his Amelia Pond has been very, very badly hurt.

Is that his fault in large part? Probably. Would it be better if Rory were here, being human as he is, rather than a flighty and dangerous alien who has already done more than his part to screw up her life? Almost certainly. He had invested so much in the Ponds’ marriage for a reason; he’s sure that Rory’s absence from her life has magnified the problems tenfold.

But he, the Doctor, is here  _now_ , so it’s his responsibility to help. Not interfere – help.

And it seems to be helping. She’s happy, or so it seems. While that’s the case, he doesn’t have to push  _too_  hard, just… nudge a little. And right now, he’s not particularly concerned about that – he’s more worried about how he’s going to fill the next two long hours before she gets home-

“There you are,” a soft, Scottish-tinted voice breaks into the silence.

He freezes next to the dining room doorway. He turns slowly and there, sitting with a rod-straight back and defiantly raised chin, is Amelia Pond.

“Amelia!” He says chirpily, shoving away the slight shock he’d just received, “I wasn’t expecting you home, I-”

She silences him with a look. She’s one of the few people he’s known who is capable of that. It gives him a moment to pause, consider her more closely – and for the first time, he notices her puffed-up eyelids over her bloodshot eyes, as well as the half-dried makeup-stained tear streaks across her cheeks.

“Amelia? What’s wrong?”

She doesn’t reply immediately. Instead, she keeps her gaze firmly fixed on him, raising a glass of white wine to her lips with gently trembling fingers – oh, this isn’t good.

“Nothing,” she says eventually, her eyes still locked to his. Her intensity of her gaze is almost too intense, too uncomfortable to bear, and he finds himself glancing occasionally down at his hands instead. He’s still standing in the doorway. “So where have you been?”

“Me? Oh!” He’s taken aback by the question – he’d rather go into what  _she’s_  been doing, and specifically why she’s been crying – but it does give him a chance to return to his comfort zone. Namely, rambling on. “Quite a busy day, actually. Helped shut down a Skyonian weather machine. Ran into J.K. Rowling – lovely woman – and helped alphabetise all of the encyclopaedias down at the library.”

“And that’s it?”

He hesitates – he doesn’t think it’d be a good idea to tell her  _everything_ , but neither does he want to lie. “Well… I had lunch with an old friend, but that was about it.” There. Both true and generic, perfect for his needs.

Once again, she doesn’t reply, she simply… stares at him, the expression on her face one of the few languages he isn’t able to translate. A knot has materialised in his belly, born out of some screaming instinct deep within his mind, but he suppresses it.

“Can I ask you something?” she asks, in a voice still admirably neutral and balanced for someone who has clearly spent much of the last few hours in tears.

“Of course.”

“Sit down.” He does so, and at last she tears her gaze away from him – instead staring at the depths of the wine still in the glass she’s holding. “Have you wondered about me? I mean, about the last few years of my life. Since you  _left_  me here.”

He flinches – he doesn’t like the way she’s emphasised the word  _left._  “I don’t-”

“Don’t play games with me, Doctor. Have you or not?”

“I…”  _Well._  He’s actually somewhat lost for words – funny, that, how tough being straight with someone can be. “Yes. I have, a little bit. Just… curiosity, you know?”

Her expression remains stony. “Would you like to know?”

He hesitates again – oh, he’s got to stop doing that, or she’ll read him like a dictionary. “It’s… not exactly a priority of mine. I mean, maybe one day-”

“Liar.”

It’s just one word. A single word laid out in such a plain, simple manner that any bystander would have ignored it, yet laced with such hidden venom that for a moment, his hearts stop.

“Amy-”

“Does he still call me that?” She lets out a mirthless snort, takes another somewhat-unstead swig of the glass. Her pale, shapely face is now twisted by a dark scowl, her eyes wild. “Go on, then. Told you all my secrets, did he?”

Somewhere in a portion of his mind not wracked with alarm, he decides that it’s no use hiding the patently obvious. Playing Amelia Pond for a fool is never a wise idea. “Amelia, we didn’t… we talked, yes, but I never-”

“Never what?  _Never what?_ ” At last, her voice is rising… oh, this is so very, very wrong. “Never poked around? Never tried to rummage through my life? Never  _interfered?_ ”

“Amy, I was just trying to-”

“ _Don’t,”_ she yells, rising so quickly she kicks over the chair, “ _lie to me!”_

At twelve hundred years of age, he should be used to this, he should be inured from the pain… yet he isn’t, he really isn’t – but he can fix this.

He knows he can fix this.

* * *

She isn’t quite sure how she’s alive, really.

All this emotion, all this despair, all this  _rage_  can’t possibly be contained within one person without destroying them from the inside out. And maybe it has, maybe it’s already snuffed out every trace of the person she once was and left an empty shell in its wake but she, Amelia Pond, is  _still here._

She’s still alive, and despite her wild and desperate hopes the universe isn’t about to open up the abyss and swallow her whole. She isn’t getting off that easily.

No, she’s a survivor, and she’ll do whatever is required of her to survive – and if that means taking all those destructive, corrosive  _feelings,_ these memories, and projecting them straight onto her raggedy man, then so be it.

After all, it’s all his fucking fault.

It’s difficult to say the least. He’s clever, extremely so, and through the puppy eyes, the spluttered half-denials and the perplexed stares, she spots that subtle, clever game he plays. Oh, he’s good, he’s very good – but she’s better.

Eventually, through tears and screams, insults and words that should be taken back she manages to whittle away his defences enough to uncover a glimpse of the truth.

She takes a long, deep breath and closes her eyes, leaning over the kitchen bench with her back turned to him.

“So you went to Rory to find out all about me over the last few years,” she says, her voice cracked from screaming and choked by sobs. “Without ever telling me what you were doing. Without ever asking  _me._ ”

“Well – I mean, you seemed to be trying pretty hard to hide it,” he says meekly. It doesn’t  _sound_  like an accusation, but… well, she’s smarter than that.

Somehow she manages to suppress the rising red mist once again and manages a bitter, “Yeah. Wonder why.”

“Amelia, I’m sorry-”

“For what? Not being able to  _fix me_  like some magic box of yours?” she spits out, spinning around to face him. Oh sure, he  _looks_  the part, horrified and injured on her behalf, but how many times has she seen that before? Always  _after_  the fact…

No. She has to be smarter now. “Does it always end like this?” she asks, with as normal a voice as she can muster.

He seems surprised by the question – and for once, she thinks it’s genuine. “Does it – what?”

“You. With your  _friends._  Do you always leave them behind like this, leaving a pile of rubble behind you?”

Yeah. That hurts. She can see it in his eyes, and it gives her a dark but quite unmistakeable sense of satisfaction to know that he’s now receiving a tiny glimpse of her world. But it’s only a glimpse, and it isn’t long before he does his usual trick: change the subject.

“But I don’t understand,” he says, throwing his arms up in exasperation. “What happened between you two?

“Life happened, Doctor.  _Life._ ”

“But you were always-”

“ _Supposed to be together?_  Because that’s been your pet project the whole time, hasn’t it?” she snarls, striking him dumb. She can sense it, she can  _feel_  his lack of comprehension at her sudden fury, his refusal to acknowledge that  _her life is not his to play with_ , not any more _–_ and it simply fuels her rage. There’s fire in her eyes, her knuckles bone-white with rage and the blood surging through her temples. She’s close, so close to breaking point, so close to crossing that line she knows she must never, ever cross again—

She controls herself, slowly, and pierces the cloud of blinding rage that had descended over her to see his face. She looks at him, his usually bright and jovial features contorted with anguish, consumed by desperation, despair,  _confusion…_ and she realises what she has to do.

This ends now.

She raises her chin, lowers her voice, and takes back her life.

“I’ll give you twenty minutes to pack your stuff.”


	12. Bargaining: I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sum total of it? She manages, for the most part. For the overwhelming majority of her time, she’s calm and collected and dealing with whatever shit comes her way. Yes, every now and then she spends an evening on the couch with wine glass in hand, staring out the window at invisible stars, but that's just the evening. For the rest of the day, she doesn’t think about him, she doesn’t feel the gaping hole that was once him and she certainly doesn’t wait for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry. Been exceptionally busy. Thanks to Laura, Lizzie and Regina for help with this.

 

* * *

**ACT THREE: Bargaining**

* * *

**A week earlier...**

_It’s not like her to be nervous._

_Then again, it’s not like her to be late either – that’s his shtick, and it’s one he’s very good at. She would’ve preferred him not to demonstrate that tonight, though._

_It’s not a date. Despite the ribbing Laura constantly gives her, it’s absolutely not a date. It’s just a night out with her closest friend. Alright, so maybe she’s treating it as a particularly special night, but that’s just because of the fact that she’s not-so-secretly wanted to see this concert for a long, long time. Even moreso than the stadium rock gig she’d managed to scrounge tickets for last week._

_True, she’d indeed spent a good hour getting ready, picking out her favourite midnight-blue dress, putting on makeup and brushing out her hair into eye-catching curls, but that’s just because it’s a special night. She knows she looks absolutely dazzling, and she’s already attracted many a wide-eyed gaze standing alone outside the theatre as she is – but it’s not a date._

_It’s a night out. And it won’t be much of a night out if he doesn’t show up soon-_

_“Sorry! Am I late?” She spins around to see him running up the path towards her, looking ridiculous as ever and quite dashing in equal measure, owing to his rather striking choice of tux and tails. It’s the same combination he’d worn to her wedding, and just quietly she finds it just as hot now as she had back then._

_But she has other things on her mind. “What took you so long, ya moron?”_

_“Got held up. Traffic. Weather. Potential Cyberman invasion. Usual things. Still not used to running at a human pace, I have to say,” he rattles off, at his usual double-speed. Having said his piece, he finally takes a breath and a chance to look at her properly. “You look absolutely wonderful.”_

_She smiles. “Ha. So do you, for once,” she jibes, giving his white silk bowtie a gentle tweak. “I was worrying that you weren’t going to show up.”_

_“Wouldn’t have missed this for the world, Pond,” he replies, before his playful smile settles into something… warmer, somehow. “I know you’ve wanted this for a long time.”_

_“And you got us front row seats, yeah?”_

_“Of course.”_

_Their eyes meet for a moment — and driven by some nameless urge, she steps forward and gives him a soft kiss on the cheek._

_“Thank you.”_

_“My pleasure.” He offers his hand, and she takes it gently. “Shall we?”_

* * *

 She’d given him twenty minutes.

He takes thirty.

It’s a struggle to say the least. With herself, first of all, as there’s nothing enjoyable or perversely satisfying about this. But she does it anyway because she has to, because it’s necessary. And besides, he gives her enough of a fight without her own self-doubt assisting him.

She’d expected no less, to be fair. He’s a clingy sort of guy, and she can _see_ in his eyes that he’s genuinely sorry, he’s genuinely desperate to make amends. And so he’d pleaded, he’d argued, he’d apologised again and again and again – but she doesn’t budge.

If anything, it just cements in her mind that what she’s doing is absolutely, completely necessary.

Otherwise it’ll just continue. He’ll barge into her life, like he always does, tempt her with the promise of something amazing, like he always does, and then prance straight out again with a trail of destruction in his wake. While he’s with her, it’s worth it, it’s _always_ worth it – but sometimes he isn’t.

He leaves. He _always_ leaves.

So if she’s going to be eventually left high and dry anyway, then why not break it off on her own terms? 

It’s not like she’s breaking _up_ with him, after all. She's just firewalling her life, not letting him dominate it so thoroughly. One day she’ll let him back. Maybe. If she feels like it.

Though no one would have known it, given how he desperately he pleads with her to stay.

“Amelia, I’m _sorry_ -”

But she just shoves a bag full of his stuff into his arms and slams the door in his face.

* * *

 An hour later, the house is silent at last.

For a while it hadn’t been – he’d continued to beg and hammer on the door, but eventually even that had stopped. She knows that if he wants to, if he _really_ wants to, he can just barge back in and deep down she’s thankful that he doesn’t.

Instead, he seems to have left at last. Though he hasn’t taken the TARDIS, which is still parked as ever on the opposite side of the street, but there’s no sign of him in person. So at least he hadn’t lied about it being locked – unless he's sticking around voluntarily, an idea she finds difficult to imagine.

In the meantime, the whole point of this exercise had been to allow her to get on with her life. So that’s what she does.

Plus, she has to concentrate whilst cooking, lest she cut herself whilst trying to chop meat or burn herself on the stove. That leaves her less time to think, or reminisce, or wallow in her own emotions. Which is definitely a good thing right now. 

She gets out a bunch of carrots, the last ingredient she needs to round off the beef stew she’s making, and starts chopping. Though given how shaky her hands are, she has to be careful.

_Chop._

To be honest, as far as emotional messes go, this had been fairly clean – her last boyfriend had taken a week to get rid of. _That_ had been no fun, and it had only been through a few pointed reminders that she was no harmless wallflower than she’d shaken him off. 

_Chop._

In this case, she’s gone from sleeping in the Doctor’s arms to alone but okay – not brilliant, but okay – in the space of less than a day. 

Then again, it wasn’t an actual break-up.

_Chop._

Indeed, now that she thinks about it – and she isn’t quite sure why she is – it’s lifted a burden. _Chop._ It’s proof, once and for all, that she needs, genuinely needs, no one _._ _Chop._ Not Rory. _Chop._ Not the Doctor. _Chop._

No one. She _has_ other people in her life, of course: Sophia, Laura, her other friends, her family... but she doesn't _need_ them. Hardly any of them had been there during her childhood – well, one of them anyway – and she'd gotten by. She'll get by now as well. 

She's become what she's always hoped to be: completely and utterly self-reliant.

She pours the roughly sliced carrot into the simmering pot, savouring the rich aroma rising from the stew. Really, these are the things that matter; aliens and other universes and historical legends are well and good, but this what counts. _Life._

She starts on the next carrot, and is halfway through when there’s a loud knock on the door.

She jumps, startled slightly, and in the process cuts her hand with the knife.

“ _Ow –_ fuck,” she hisses, immediately burying the injured hand in her apron. It soon turns out to be a bad idea, as red stains soon appear in the cream-coloured fabric, so she quickly starts searching the drawers for a cloth.

There’s another knock, this time more insistent. She ignores it, a little hot spark of anger building inside her. If it’s him-

“Amelia, I know you’re in there,” a familiar female voice drifts in through the open window. “Can you open up?”

_Soph._

She quickly jogs over to the door – whilst busily wrapping her bleeding hand in a makeshift bandage – and wrenches it open.

“Thanks, I just wanted to – are you alright?” Sophia asks, noting with obvious concern the red patch in the midriff of Amelia’s apron as well as the stained, messy wrappings around her left hand. Then, as if struck by some horrible possibility, her face goes bone-white and her eyes widen to saucers. “What did you—”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Amelia cuts over her with a reassuring smile, ushering her friend in. “Seriously. Just an accident.” 

“Alright.” Sophia doesn’t look awfully convinced but she steps inside, before meeting Amelia’s eyes with a deepening frown. “You look terrible, like you’ve been crying.”

“Really?” Amelia touches her cheeks lightly to check, and to her surprise finds them rather moist – has she been in tears this whole time? She's so emotionally worn that she honestly must have missed it. “Oh.”

“Laura told me about what happened.” _Of course she has._ “It’s been a tough day, hasn’t it?”

“A bit, yeah.” Bloody hell, she must look a state if it’s _that_ obvious. “Want to come in?”

“I’d love to.” They both head inside, and Sophia soon finds the merrily simmering stew. “Mm, smells good.” She then notices the spots of blood on the chopping board. “Oh – right. Was that because of me?”

“You startled me a bit, yeah. I was doing carrots at the time.”

Sophia picks up the large kitchen knife, which has a thin streak of red on its blade, before eyeing Amelia carefully over the top, those kind but probing eyes searching out god-knows-what – probably her hands, which are still trembling. “You aren’t invincible, Amelia, you know that?”

Amelia grinds her teeth – sure, she might not be, but since when has mere impossibility stopped her trying? “Look, if you’re going to-”

“I’m not. You know I’m not.” Sophia sighs, an exhausted, almost dejected sound. “Okay. But you don’t mind it I help finish up, do you?”

“Of course not,” Amelia replies with a manufactured half-smile. Well, now that Sophia’s here, she could use the company, and it’s tough to cook with an injured hand. “But did you want a chat too?”

“I did,” Sophia says, finding and taking the spare apron whilst Amelia finds a bottle of wine. 

“How’s Laura, by the way?”

“She’s still upset after you hung up so quickly — no, don’t apologise,” Sophia warns when she notices Amelia opening mouth. _Christ_ , she can be predictable when she’s coming off an emotional extreme. “She’s upset over what happened, not over what you did. She’ll be around in a few minutes.”

It mollifies the guilt, but Amelia isn’t totally convinced that Sophia is being truthful. Nonetheless, she leaves it for now – no point picking any fights this evening, and if Laura is indeed coming around she can ask the question in person. “Right. So, what’s up?”

“Just popping by to see how you’re doing, that’s all,” Sophia says, accepting the offered wine glass as Amelia takes the seat opposite. She looks around. “Where’s the Doctor?”

“Gone,” Amelia says brusquely as she takes the seat opposite.

“By ‘gone’, do you mean-”

“I kicked him out? Yeah.”

Sophia’s eyes widen momentarily in surprise, but she soon settles and studies her friend in surprise.

“May I ask-”

“He tried to put me and Rory back together, alright?” Amelia interrupts, a bit harshly but she doesn’t care. It’s too raw, too fresh for it to be otherwise. “So he isn’t living here anymore. That’s really it.”

For a moment, she wonders if that’s true, whether it _is_ as simple as the Doctor having tried to put her and the Doctor back together, and indeed whether that’s precisely what had happened – but it doesn’t matter. She’s made her choice and she’s absolutely sure that it’s the right choice.

She has no regrets, not this time.

And Sophia understands – or, at least, knows Amelia well enough to know that she won’t be revealing anything more. It’s one of the prerequisites to being a friend of hers: knowing her many, many boundaries.

“So will you be okay?”

Amelia pauses, thinks, and smiles. A small, gentle smile, but determined. In control.

“Yeah. I think so.”

* * *

Laura arrives half an hour later. Within seconds, Amelia is apologising profusely for hanging up hours before – apologies that Laura point-blank refuses to accept.

“But still,” she adds, only with the merest hint of grump, “don't do that to me again.”

Dinner is pleasant enough after that, but also a little cold. Sophia and Laura — _especially_ Laura — want to talk, but Amelia is emotionally and physically drained, so she puts her guard up and doesn't let it down all evening.

Well, she knows they'll understand. They're have to – they're her friends, after all. In any case, within half an hour of them leaving, she's collapsed onto the mattress and — amazingly — nodding off, having successfully navigated her way through her first Doctor-free evening of the year.

But she was counting on that – she didn't think she'd have any problems with the first evening. No, it's the first morning afterwards that's the trickiest.

She had expected that, of course. No decision is without consequences, and she's more or less pushed a great big reset button on her life.

Actually, now that she considers it, that's a pretty good metaphor – this isn't like four years ago, not in the slightest. She isn't irrevocably changing her life, she's just bringing it back to where it was just a few months ago. Even so, it surprises her just how settled she'd become into her routine – and hence, how jarring it is when she's wrenched out of it.

Mostly it's really dumb, mundane things that she notices. 

First off, she wakes up dangerously late for a work day, having become used to having the Doctor as a walking, talking alarm clock. She then scrabbles around blearily for a good five minutes looking for clothes – before remembering that the Doctor had left them neatly folded in the laundry downstairs.

Then it's breakfast, which she'd failed to budget for in her morning schedule because, of course, _he_ had made usually made breakfast for her since Boxing Day. The coffee she makes herself is decidedly inferior to his blend too – where _had_ he learned how to make it like that? Maybe she'll get Melody to take her there one day. If she sees her again, that is.

But she manages, and all those stupid little annoyances aren't about to worry her. No, what _does_ put her off is that she does all this in complete silence. Not a whisper, not a word leaves her lips – why would it? She's alone.

It's amazing how silence can be the most obvious, the most intrusive noise of all.

There is, however, one lesson that Amelia has had drilled into her again and again and again: causality. Action, reaction. Event, consequence. In this case, the event was her abrupt disappearance from work the previous day. The consequence is a meeting with her boss.

In fairness, it could be worse. Indeed, part of her was expecting to be fired on the spot, orat a minimum yelled at, but instead she’s just met with silence. Long, uncomfortable silence.

She shifts nervously, waiting for her editor to speak or move — hell, anything but the unyielding, unceasing stare from her editor. She clears her throat, doing her best cool-and-composed impression. It doesn’t quite work.

“So…” she says, once the silence has become definitively unbearable.

“You know what this is about.” He doesn’t even sound mad, which in some ways makes it even worse.

“I had personal shit come up, I had to go deal with it,” she explains, surprising herself at how, well, _truthful_ she is. “It won’t happen again.” She’s sure of that.

“You’ve said that before.” He sounds — he sounds resigned, and that realisation instantly quickens Amelia’s pulse.

“I know. I mean — I know this happens a fair bit, but I swear I’m sorting it out and I—”

“Woah, easy,” her editor interjects, raising his hands in a disarming gesture. “You’re not being fired, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

She won’t admit it out loud, but that’s precisely what she was worried about. Losing the Doctor is one thing, losing her job—

“Okay. Thanks,” she replies, her voice slightly thickened by the bloodrush. _Breathe, Amelia._ “I mean it, though. It’s not going to happen again, I dealt with it.”

He stares at her for a second, then two. She shifts in her seat again.

“Alright,” he says with an air of resigned finality. “But I’ll hold you to that, you understand? We need you fully on board, Amelia. You do valuable work here.”

Minutes later, she’s at her desk and preparing herself for another day crammed into an office cubicle. Her first order of business is to prepare the background package for an assignment to Taiwan — though not _her_ assignment, of course. Her work is too _valuable_ for that.

Still, it’s at least something she can draw on her experience from — she’d been to the Takoro Gorge once, a breathtaking marble canyon wreathed in pristine mountain fog in the island’s east. Not that she’d had a lot of time to stop and admire the view, unfortunately, as she and the Doctor were being chased by fire-breathing bats at the time—

_Doctor-free, remember?_

She shakes her head and resumes her normal life.

* * *

Overall, she manages.

She deals with it. She identifies the things she needs to fix and she fixes them. Packs them into boxes. Locks them away — thinks about throwing away the key too. She has a job, and a life, and damn if anything is going to get in the way of that.

She spends the next three weeks absolutely fixated on everything that is _not_ the Doctor. Everything normal, everything simple, everything earthbound. Work. Shopping. Clothes. Parties. Family. Friends.

And it works. It really does work. She convinces her editor to start up her weekly column again, even if the actual material is all recycled from memory. She starts going to all the cocktail parties she’d skipped because the Doctor had an apocalypse on hand, and she’s on time at the bar every Friday.

Of course, that means she starts drinking again, but hey. What is alcohol for if not washing away her troubles?

“Amelia...” Sophia says in a warning tone when Amelia airs this, but Amelia cuts her off.

“Not tonight, Soph, alright?” Another shot goes down. “Just let me me have this.”

Sophia doesn't reply.

In the next month or so, Amelia finds other ways to ignore his absence, too: like the radio in her kitchen, providing the constant stream of incessant chatter to fill the spaces between her many walls; like her regular visits to her oft-neglected family; like her writing of applications for any job in the industry that actually involves real journalism.

The sum total of it? She manages, for the most part. For the overwhelming majority of her time, she’s calm and collected and dealing with whatever shit comes her way. Yes, every now and then she spends an evening on the couch with wine glass in hand, staring out the window at invisible stars, but that's just the evening. For the rest of the day, she doesn’t think about him, she doesn’t feel the gaping hole that was once _him_ and she certainly doesn’t wait for him—

“Amelia?”

She starts, broken out of her train of thought by a voice whose origin she can’t place. She blinks, looks up, and sees Laura frowning at her. Another blink, and it comes back — she’s at the pub again. Laura and a few of her friends are here, and Amelia had allowed herself to be dragged along for reasons she can’t quite remember. Right.

She isn’t sure _why_ it took so long for her to work out where she was, but she suspects the answer has something to do with the glass in her hand. And the one before that, and the one before that.

“Sorry. Drifted off,” she says, composing herself.

“You haven’t said anything for, like, an hour.” Laura’s frown isn’t going away, and it’s making Amelia feel more than a little uncomfortable. “Everything okay?”

“Sure. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“You tell me. You’ve barely spoken all night.”

Amelia bristles a little at that, although manages to keep her cool. Letting people care about her in public isn’t something that comes naturally to her, and she’s not up for anything unnatural tonight. “It’s fine, Laura. Just tired.”

Laura eyes her carefully, as if probing Amelia’s largely expressionless-if-uncoordinated features for any cracks or weaknesses, but she holds firm. Unlike her wife, Amelia can keep Laura out if she needs to. Or if they’re drunk. Which they are.

Either way, there’s some amazingly fascinating topic of conversation involving one of her mates whose name she _swears_ starts with M, and Laura’s quickly drawn away, leaving Amelia largely in solitude with her glass — which she suddenly notices is empty.

She ignores the bartender’s stare when she asks for another drink.

* * *

The next morning, she wakes up in her bed — and immediately regrets it.

She’s not sure precisely when she got a fire alarm instead of a bedside clock, but the noise is like an auditory pipe-bomb detonated against her ears. Her hand reaches blindly for her bedside table — only to have it click off without her intervention.

“Good morning,” a gentle, soft voice says, one she recognises as Sophia’s. 

She sits up slowly, rubbing her head, small explosions detonating behind her eyes with ever move she makes. She hasn’t had a hangover like this in a long, long time. “Hey, Soph. What, uh—” God, she feels _horrendous_ — “What time is it?”

“Ten past eleven.”

For some reason, a hot rush builds in her spine, electrifying and stiffening as it goes — and then she remembers. It’s Friday. “Shit.”

“Amelia—” Sophia places a hand on her shoulder, but Amelia’s already throwing off the blanket in rapidly rising panic. If she skips work again—

“Amelia, stop.” With that, Sophia’s grip on her shoulders becomes too strong to ignore and Amelia has no choice but to acquiesce. “It’s okay, I called in sick for you.”

She relaxes, but only somewhat. “You’re supposed to be at work too, aren’t you?”

“It's my day off.” Sophia smiles, but in a way that doesn’t diminish the obvious concern in her eyes. “But I got the feeling that you’ll have some explaining to do tomorrow.”

“Yeah.” This isn’t the first time she’s had to unexpectedly call in sick due to extreme hangover. It’s not great, but she’s no angel — and a damn good thing too, given past experience. “What, um, what happened?”

“Not much. Laura called me at about midnight to say you were on the verge of passing out, so I came by and drove you home.”

And on cue, the guilt. “Shit — I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s fine, you looked tired more than ill,” Sophia cuts her off, in that inimitably silk-and-steel manner of hers. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve been hit by a bus,” she grumbles, sitting up properly now, her head still in her hands. “I — urgh, I need coffee.”

As if conjured up by magic, a steaming mug of coffee appears under her nose. Amelia thanks her friend – before the penny drops. The staying over, the alarm clock, the pick-me-up coffee... “You're really, really mad at me, aren't you?”

Sophia nips her lower lip between her teeth, glances away a little. That's a sure sign if Amelia even needed one that, yeah, Sophia is not her usual happy and sympathetic self today. At least, not completely.

“No,” Sophia lies eventually. “But we do need to talk.”

“About what?”

“You know what.” And sure, Amelia does.

“I told you,” she says firmly – at least, as firmly as she can under the conditions – “I did what I needed to do. I'm not regretting it, not for a minute.”

“Are we talking about the same thing here? You have—” 

_A drinking problem—_

“—a lot to deal with, I know,” Sophia says, much too calmly for the brightness in her eyes. “But this is the fourth time I've had to do this, Amelia.”

“Look, I'm sorry, I don't mean to–”

“Just tell me what's going on. You're my best friend; I need to understand.”

“I—” She stops, waits, catches her words on her tongue. She ought to be careful here, choose her words with precision, be absolutely disciplined about what she reveals– 

_Fuck it._

“Look, I don't think you can.”

“ _Amelia—_ ”

“Let me finish. I don't expect you to get it. Or Laura, or Michael, or work, or mum or anyone else. And that's okay,” she says, the hard edge dropping from her voice as she continues, “because it's not something you can really get unless you've _had_ it, you know?”

A pause. Then a sigh. “This is about him.”

Amelia shakes her head rapidly, decisively. “No. It's about me.”

“It's been six weeks, Amelia.”

“Six weeks is nothing.” _Try fourteen years._ Or hell, thirty-seven... if her dreams are to be believed. “What I've given up... it's not really anything I can properly describe.”

“You told me about what you did, about going to space and all that.”

“But that's just _telling_ you. It's nothing like the real thing. Like,” she starts, before pausing for a moment, letting the images come oh-so-easily to her mind's eye. “I've _met_ Vincent van Gogh. Actually met him, hugged him, and watched him paint.” She smiles a little, but sad, bittersweet.“Tried to make his life a little better. And space, space isn't just all black and empty, you know, but full of light and life and, and blues and reds and–”

She stops, catching herself just before she tumbles over the edge into her own personal vast, swirling ocean of memory. Dimly, she's aware of a little prickling on her cheek – she touches it, and finds it moist.

“Sorry,” she mutters. “But all of that – that's what I'm giving up, and more.”

Sophia eyes Amelia closely, her shrewd eyes probing, examining – before she nods and takes Amelia's hand in her own. “But you said that you don't regret it.”

Amelia doesn't reply straight away. 

“No,” she says eventually, slowly. She's chosen this life and, for once, it's something which is completely, inviolably _hers._ No one can take that away from her – no one _will_ take that away from her. “But it still hurts, you know?”

Sophia holds her hand, but her touch is cold.

* * *

Laura isn't quite so forgiving, unfortunately.

Though to be fair, that's probably an exaggeration — Amelia _knows_ that Sophia is very, well, _disappointed_ in her despite her little pep talk, and although she's obviously understanding and all that, Amelia definitely notices a change in her behaviour. Only subtly, of course, as Sophia isn't really known or indeed especially capable of anything more than that, but there's definitely a sense in which Sophia is keeping her distance.

If, at least, by “keeping her distance” one meant “barely answering her texts”.

If Amelia were to guess — and she's not sure she trusts her judgement enough to do so — she'd say that Sophia still doesn't quite appreciate just how big a deal it is for her to be firewalling the Doctor from her life. It's not exactly surprising, of course, given that the initial picture Amelia had inadvertently given her of the Doctor was of a wrecking ball who came in, dazzled her with extraordinary sights, and completely fucked her over as a result — accurate, but not in all the ways that mattered.

Laura, on the other hand, _does_ seem to get that, incredibly. Which is why she evidently feels absolutely comfortable in giving Amelia both barrels when they next meet. It's the height of summer so they're at a coffee shop, but for some reason Amelia can't feel anything but lukewarm.

Not that Laura's blunt home truths are tailor made to make her feel all warm and fuzzy inside, of course.

“I'm sorry, okay?” Amelia groans over her coffee, feeling both frustrated and justly terrible over the whole situation. “I get it. I fucked up last week.”

“Amelia, If it was just once, I wouldn't give a shit. But it's not and you know it.”

Amelia opens her mouth to reply, only to find that Laura is a bit too, well, _correct_ for her to find a good one. So she doesn't, and simply lets Laura roll on.

“Like, seriously,” Laura continues, taking the open opportunity, “You would _not_ want to hear what my mates were saying as Soph was coming over to pick you up.”

Okay, that prickles. “You really think I give a—”

“Oh, quit that crap, alright? You can't just close yourself off to everyone that you don't completely and totally trust, that's just dumb,” Laura says, managing to sound both wise _and_ extremely cross at the same time, a rare feat. “Soph and I aren't gonna be your Doctor replacements that you can lean on all the time, which in case you hadn't noticed is why Soph is leaving you alone.”

She _had_ twigged that, actually. At least, Sophia had intimated as much in the one text she'd actually received since: _if you really me, then I'll be here._ “It just – it's dumb, but it kind of feels like you guys are–”

“Abandoning you?” Laura's voice has finally softened, as has her expression, and Amelia can see the apology written on her brow. “Look, I'll talk to Soph. But you kind of get our point, right?”

Amelia nods.

“And you know that if you _really_ want to, you can just come over to our place and cry yourself dry on our couch, right?”

Another nod.

“But I _know_ that's not what you actually want,” Laura says firmly and with total conviction. “So that's why we're giving you this space. You know, for you to make your _own_ life.”

And she appreciates that, she really does — it's what she's wanted for so very, very long. She's okay with not having their full understanding, so long as she has their support.

There's a problem, though. “Laura, right now my life is basically pushing papers and google searching.” Work has not exactly improved on the holding-her-interest front in the last few weeks, and she's really starting to get towards the end of her patience on that front.

Laura looks sympathetic. “Still no luck, huh?”

Amelia makes a face. “Nothing. It's almost as if it's hard to get decent jobs in an industry that's collapsing — oh, stupid thing, hang on--” Her phone has started mid-sentence, and she has to remind herself that it's just an inanimate machine in order to stop herself giving it a death stare. “Yeah?”

“Good afternoon. Is this Amelia Pond?” It's a woman's voice, smooth, sharp, business-like.

“Uh, yeah. Sorry, who am I talking to?” Strangers calling her mobile isn't exactly something she's used to, she tends to not give out her mobile number unless—

“My name is Rebecca Cochrane, I'm the editor-in-chief of the Hyperion. How are you today?”

“I'm, er—”

_Hungover—_

_Depressed—_

_Lonely—_

“—good.” She wracks her brain for the moment, trying to work out where she'd heard the name _Hyperion_. It comes to her after a second or two: an online-only global affairs “magazine”, with an emphasis on long-form articles. Right up Amelia's street, but she hadn't seriously expected it to go anywhere, so she guesses this is a courtesy call. “Um, did you get my application?”

“We did indeed, and–”

_I'm sorry, but we received many outstanding applicants and unfortunately yours didn't quite make the cut–_

“—we were extremely impressed with both your background and your sample pieces you sent us. You do seem to be, as both you and your current editor said, a 'damn good journalist'.”

Amelia sits up straighter — much straighter. “Really?”

“Really. If you're still interested, we'd very much like to have you in for an interview, Miss Pond.”

Her mouth is hanging slightly open, her eyes are wide and her mind is blank with shock. “Yeah. That would be great.”

Opposite her, Laura smiles.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
